


Nations of the Homeless

by atlas (cissysullivan)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-10
Updated: 2015-09-10
Packaged: 2018-04-20 01:22:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 13
Words: 29,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4768247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cissysullivan/pseuds/atlas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Krissy Chambers goes to search for Claire after her disappearance after the angels fall. Jesse Turner, feeling he must do something, goes after Claire as well, the girl he’s begun to love from afar. And Claire Novak continues her vengeance on the angels, collecting their graces, while learning having so many in one place can be damaging to a vessel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Un [Krissy]

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is a sequel to First Dates Are Like Homeless Vagrants. You do not have to read that fic to completely understand this one, but I would strongly suggest it as this one will make a good deal more sense if you do. I also have a playlist for this fanfic that I would also strongly suggest listening to whilst reading :) http://8tracks.com/cloudsong1994/nations-of-the-homeless#smart_id=dj:5303864

_Abandoned cabin in the woods  
Appalachian Mountains, North Carolina, 2013_  
  
Krissy paced the living room of the cabin, holding her cellphone, trying to decide whether or not it would be a good idea to make the call she'd been thinking about making for the past week.  
  
It had been two weeks since Claire woke up and disappeared.  
  
Two weeks. Four days. Twelve hours. And eight minutes.  
  
For the first week, Krissy didn't know what to do. The day she'd found Claire had disappeared, she'd dragged Ben and Jesse out of the cabin and made them help her comb the woods. They'd searched far longer and far harder than they needed to. They'd almost gotten themselves lost going deep into the trees on the mountainside, trying to find a girl with white blonde hair, wearing clothes Krissy had loaned her.  
  
When they'd found no one by the time the sun was setting, Krissy had gone down into the town at the base of the mountain, asking anyone she saw if they'd seen a girl matching Claire's description, but no one had seen her. Krissy had spent the next two days driving to nearby towns, asking anyone there if they'd seen Claire, but no one had.  
  
The girl with stardust in her veins had evaporated.  
  
Krissy had returned to the cabin, sat in the living room and cried. She didn't know why Claire had vanished. She didn't know what had happened. She knew she shouldn't feel so abandoned and betrayed, but she did. She'd thought Claire cared about her more than this. Apparently, she'd been wrong.  
  
Then Krissy had remembered how little Claire talked, how little she shared about herself. Maybe there was more to this than her leaving. She didn't think someone had kidnapped Claire. With how dangerous Claire was on her own – something Krissy had only found out  _after_  her disappearance and she'd started Googling her name to see if anything had happened to her – she doubted that someone would be able to take her against her will.  
  
However, Claire wasn't stable. That much had been clear from the moment she'd met her. Whatever reason she'd had for leaving, she felt that Claire thought it was a good one, but she wasn't sure it  _was_  a good idea. Claire needed someone with her, someone who understood her and could take care of her when no one else knew what to do.  
  
That was why she was pacing the living room with her cellphone.  
  
There was only one other person she trusted to take care of Claire if he happened across her and that was Dean Winchester.  
  
Krissy looked down at her phone for the umpteenth time. She pressed the home button, making the screen light up. She typed in the four digit password and brought up her contacts list. She scrolled through them until she found Dean. She stared at his name for less than a minute before she tapped his name and let the phone dial his number.  
  
The phone rang. Krissy chewed nervously on her lip.  
  
"This is Dean's other,  _other_  cell, so you must know what to do."  
  
Krissy closed her eyes slowly and waited for the beep before letting out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding and saying, "Dean? This is Krissy. I'm calling because…something happened and I didn't know who else to call. We couldn't handle this one." She paused and swallowed hard past a lump that was forming in her throat. "We thought – I thought that-that I could help her, but then…"  
  
She sighed. "I guess I have to explain."  
  
She began to pace the living room again. "A few months ago, we met a girl on a hunt. She was…different. It was really obvious right away because it turned out she was the hunt, but…she wasn't what we thought she was. Anyway, she ended up staying with us because she didn't have anywhere else to go. She didn't talk much, so it was kind of obvious she had baggage, but we figured we all did, so it didn't particularly matter. But…she was  _different_."  
  
Krissy stopped to stare out a window. "She said she was a vessel, but a lot of the stuff that she was able to do didn't sound like things a regular vessel would be able to do…when I found her she was in an asylum because she'd run away from home so many times and refused to talk to the nurses. She kept trying to-to kill herself and she couldn't do it. Every time she did, she'd just…come back to life…and someone else would die the way she'd tried to die. She wasn't doing it on purpose. She told me that."  
  
She swallowed and began pacing again. "Funny thing, she knows you and your brother. But I didn't tell her we knew you, too. She-she really hates your friend, Castiel. That's the main reason we didn't tell her."  
  
Krissy didn't know why she kept saying 'we'. It had really mostly been her. She'd spent the most time with Claire and made all of the important decisions involving her and her wellbeing. "Anyway, she seemed to be handling things better recently. She still didn't talk much, but she was learning to deal."  
  
She sighed and stopped pacing again, closing her eyes briefly, pinching the bridge of her nose. "But that was before the meteor shower."  
  
Opening her eyes once more, she began her regular walk of the living room. "She went catatonic. She didn't say anything for days. Jesse said we needed to bring her to a hospital. I didn't want to because I was afraid they'd just lock her up again. Finally, on the eighth day, I knew he was right. We had to bring her to a hospital. She wasn't eating or anything and if we didn't get her help, I was afraid she was going to die. I went to get her, but she was just…gone."  
  
Again, Krissy stopped walking and stared out the window. "I don't know where she went. She's-she's in a bad way. She's off the rails. She could hurt someone or herself. I think she went out to kill the angels that fell. That's what she said the meteor shower was. She said they were falling angels. She said she was trying to kill all the angels and now that there's lots of them on Earth, she can kill more of them. But that's not the point. The-the point is, I really need to find her. She's-she's kind of my best friend. And she's not a bad person. She's just…messed up. So…I guess that's what happened. Call me back when you get this."  
  
She hung up.  
  
Krissy collapsed into an armchair sitting by the window, her head in her hands. Her cellphone fell from her fingers and clunked to the floor, skidding across the carpet, away from her towards the bedroom where only two weeks ago, Claire lay comatose, and, after leaving that message, Krissy felt her absence more acutely than she had since the day she disappeared.  
  
Looking up, Krissy turned her gaze out the window, at the trees that still had their bright green summer leaves. They would keep them for another month and a half. Then they'd start to change from green to red, yellow, and orange before finally relinquishing their grip on the branches they clung to so desperately now and fluttered to the ground, adding to the already dense carpet of leaves that coated on the forest floor.  
  
 _Why did she leave?_  
  
The question came unbidden to Krissy's mind. It wasn't the first time she'd asked herself that question. It'd been repeating itself over and over and over again in the back of her mind ever since she'd found Claire missing, the open windows the only indication that she'd left of her own volition. Of course, Krissy had considered the possibility that Claire was kidnapped, but that seemed highly unlikely. If someone had wanted to kidnap her, they would've broken the window to the room Claire was in. There was no way to open them from the outside, so that would've been the only way in and if they'd done that, then Krissy would've heard it.  
  
She still wasn't sure which one was worse: Claire being kidnapped or Claire leaving on her own without giving a reason, without even saying goodbye.  
  
"You only want to find her so you can ask her why she didn't give you a goodbye kiss," Jesse had argued during the first few days after Claire's disappearance when Krissy had insisted they needed to scour the woods one more day because they needed to find her.  
  
"So?" Krissy had replied angrily, but she'd been shocked at herself for saying it, admitting she was more upset about Claire not saying goodbye than she was letting on. Still, she hadn't really thought Jesse knew about the relationship the two of them shared, though, she wasn't sure how obvious they'd been. "Don't act like you're not either."  
  
Jesse had pursed his lips and looked away, which was the opposite of what Krissy expected. She'd thought Jesse might have more feelings for Claire than he was letting on, but it wasn't until that moment she realized her suspicions were correct. She was too surprised to say anything else and the search for the other girl ceased after another small argument where Jesse had argued that if Claire wanted to be found, she wouldn't have left without saying goodbye in the first place.  
  
Now, sitting alone in the cabin, after both of the boys had gone into town for groceries, Krissy wanted to start the search back up again. She knew she couldn't ask either Ben or Jesse to come with her. They'd given up on finding Claire, but Krissy needed to find her. She had a bad feeling about all of this. Claire was self-destructive and, though it'd been horrible, there was a reason she'd been in that asylum. There was a reason Krissy had insisted she stay with them after they got her out of it. She  _needed_  people to take care of her. She was unstable. And Krissy really didn't want to think about what might happen if she didn't find her.  
  
Sitting alone in the cabin, it seemed the solution was obvious and it sort of amazed her that she hadn't thought of it before.  
  
She had to leave to go find Claire.  
  
Did she really think that Claire was just going to wander back to her? She'd left without saying goodbye. She'd gone out of her way to disappear into the woods and keep herself from being found. She didn't  _want_  to be found. Jesse was right about that, but Krissy knew she had to find her and fast. If the boys didn't want to come along that was fine. She'd go without them and she wouldn't rest until she found Claire and brought her home.  
  
Pushing herself up from the armchair in the living room, Krissy walked with purpose into her bedroom, the same bedroom where Claire had lain catatonic two weeks ago. She avoided looking at the bed, the last place she'd seen Claire before her disappearance, as she pulled a backpack from the closet and began to stuff it with clothes, personal belongings she might want to keep with her, some holy water, and a jar of salt. Once that was finished, she grabbed a duffle bag and left the bedroom, going into what was meant to be a hall closet, but when she opened it up, it was full of weapons. She grabbed one of just about everything before zipping the duffle shut.  
  
Krissy dumped the full bags on the kitchen table and was sitting down to pull on her boots when she realized she couldn't just disappear like Claire had. Ben and Jesse would wonder what had happened to her and they'd go looking for her. She didn't know how long they would look, but she didn't want them to feel as confused and lost about her absence as she did about Claire's.  
  
After tugging on her boots and doing up the laces, Krissy grabbed a bit of scrap paper from a drawer in the kitchen and a pen from a cup on the counter and wrote them a short note.  
  
 _I've gone looking for Claire. I've got a bad feeling about this. Be back soon hopefully._  
\- K  
  
She left the note on the counter next to the uncapped pen. She didn't know if they'd see it right away, but they would see it sooner or later and they wouldn't worry or try to come after her.  
  
At least, that was what she hoped.  
  
Something told her that Jesse and Ben coming along would be a bad idea.  
  
Krissy took one last look around the cabin. She told herself she was making sure she'd gotten everything she needed, but the truth was that she had a feeling she wasn't going to be coming back. Finally, she couldn't stall any longer. She hoisted the bags onto her shoulders and left the cabin.  
  
She didn't look back once.


	2. Deux [Claire]

_Angels Sports Bar_  
Anaheim, California 2013  
  
The ambience of the bar was what Claire enjoyed more than anything else. The way the noise from the TVs mounted on the walls was so loud, she could feel it in her bones. The way people's conversations were just loud enough to be heard over the din of the music playing overhead, but not loud enough to be distinguishable. And the way a girl like her could just melt into the crowd and not be noticed unless she chose to be.  
  
Tilting her head back and closing her eyes, she took a deep breath, the smoky scent of the bar filling her nostrils. She'd just come from a club, the strobe lights from the dancefloor were still imprinted on her retinas, so she saw them even when she blinked. She had many happy memories of her time spent in the cabin in the woods. More than she cared to admit, but one of her favorites was of the night she went to the club with Krissy and she tried to take at least one night a week to find a new one to go to in the city that was slowly becoming her new home.  
  
It had been two weeks since Claire had woken up in the cabin in the woods and left.  
  
She still remembered it as though it had happened only yesterday.  
  
After thinking her way out of the maze that had been her mind, she started awake, finding herself on the bed in Krissy's room of the cabin. She stared at the ceiling, breathing hard as though she'd just lain down after running a marathon. Her fingers clutched at the comforter beneath her, the memories of the terrors that had haunted her in her mind still fresh.  
  
Voices sounded from outside the door. She turned towards it. She could hear Krissy and Jesse yelling at one another. She couldn't make out the words. The only word she could make out was the one repeating over and over and over again in her head.  
  
_Run. Run. Run._  
  
Claire hesitated, listening to the voices coming from outside of the room she was in. They belonged to people that cared about her, that had taken her away from the asylum she'd been trapped in for the past two years.  
  
And they'd reminded her of her mission, her reason for living.  
  
She was collecting halos. And no one could get in her way.  
  
She hadn't even taken the time to put on a pair of shoes. She launched herself off the bed and wrenched open the windows. She looked back only once before she leapt from the sill and began crashing through the underbrush of the forest surrounding the cabin, staggering downhill, heading towards the town where she and Krissy had gone to the club.  
  
She didn't want them to find her, but she knew that she had to look more than a little disheveled, so, after cleaning herself up in the bathroom of a gas station and stealing a pair of shoes from a Goodwill store, she'd began walking down the side of the road, away from the town, her thumb stuck out. She got in the first car that stopped for her.  
  
And now she was here, standing in this bar, not because she wanted to be, but because she had to be. She had a knife tucked into an arm strap in one sleeve and an angel blade she'd stolen from her latest victim hidden in the other. She'd had to get new weapons, new clothes. She'd had to start all over again. After she'd been arrested and sent to the asylum, all of her weaponry had been stolen. She wondered if her last angel blade was still in the police station in New Orleans, but it didn't matter. That she'd been able to get back easily. What she needed now was money and that was why she'd left the club down the street early and come to the bar.  
  
A girl who was barely eighteen years old that went around doing a job she wasn't ever paid for didn't have much in the way of cash. And she could only get it at places like this where girls were seen as lesser than men and no man expected any girl to know how to play pool better than them. Especially a skinny, sick looking, barely legal girl with a fake ID, bright red lipstick, and clothes that showed off way more than they should.  
  
But that had been Claire's intention.  
  
She'd dressed in clothes she knew would catch the attention of the sleazy men at the pool tables. She'd learned a long time ago that the less she wore, the less likely they were to figure out she was hustling them until it was too late and she had all of their pocket change in her purse.  
  
"Well, hello there darlin'," said a heavyset man near the door who looked like Larry the cable guy complete with a thick southern accent. His eyes roved over Claire's body, taking in her white blonde hair tucked behind a heavily pierced ear, her tight black tank top, her ripped black shorts, and her open-toed black high heels. "What's a pretty girl like you doin' at a place like this?"  
  
Claire forced a nervous smile onto her lips. "I-I must be lost. I came from the club down the street and this looked like the only place I could get some food, but I'm broke." She spoke in a southern accent, knowing she'd win the man's sympathy better if she made it seem like she was from the same corner of the world as them.  
  
The man didn't bother hiding the hunger in his eyes or the equally hungry grin that stretched his lips as he took several steps towards her, holding the pool cue in one hand, the other braced against the pool table nearby. He staggered slightly and Claire took an automatic step back as he approached her.  
  
"Well, how about this, darlin'," the man said, leaning so heavily on his pool cue Claire was surprised it didn't snap in two, "I'll buy you dinner and you can talk to me and my friends."  
  
"Alright," Claire replied.  
  
A few moments later, she was sitting down at one of the tables near the bar and the TVs mounted on the walls, a plate covered in French fries in front of her. She'd already eaten the burger that had been there and the men hadn't protested when she'd asked if she could have a second order of French fries because she was so hungry. She wasn't sure if this was because they were so drunk they didn't notice she was using them for their credit card or if they thought the more they gave her, the more likely they were to get something out of her later. If it was the latter, they were going to be sorely disappointed.  
  
"Mmm, this is so  _good_ ," she said, keeping her fake accent in place as she swirled a fry around in ketchup on a smaller separate plate before popping it in her mouth. She smiled innocently at the man sitting next to her. He smelled like sweat and gasoline. She noticed he was still holding the pool cue. She jutted her chin towards it and asked, "So what y'all playin' anyway?"  
  
The man looked at the pool cue and readjusted his grip on it saying, "Just general pool. You ever played before, darlin'?"  
  
Claire smiled apologetically and shook her head. "Can't say I have." Her eyes brightened a little as she glanced at the cue again. She bit the corner of her lip. "Could you teach me?"  
  
The man glanced at the pool cue as well, as though she'd noticed something he hadn't. He grinned, showing off a row of yellow teeth. "Well, sure darlin'," he said. "I don't see why not. What d'you say boys?"  
  
The other men nodded in agreement and, as she stood, Claire gripped the back of the chair she'd been sitting in extra hard to keep herself from smirking.  
  
The billiards area was set up just beyond the restaurant seating. There were only three pool tables, each with a triangle of pool balls at its center, and this time of night the only one being used was the one Claire and the men were standing around. There were racks of pool cues leaning against the back wall by the pool tables with a small tray of cue chalk for patrons to use in the center of the racks.  
  
"Alright, darlin'," the man holding the pool cue said. "I suppose I should introduce you to everyone first. This here is Buddy, Earl, and Otis, and I'm Jud."  
  
The men each waved as Jud pointed to them, including himself, as he said their names.  
  
All of them looked alike in Claire's opinion.  
  
Earl and Jud were heavyset men with thick mustaches, overalls, plaid shirts, and trucker caps. The only difference between the two of them was their hair colors. Jud had muddy brown hair and Earl's was going white around the edges. Buddy was taller than the other three and slightly thinner, too. He had a mustache and five o'clock shadow and was also wearing overalls, but he didn't have a shirt on under them. His hair was a bright red and stuck up every which way on the top of his head. Earl and Otis were heavyset men as well, but they weren't wearing overalls. They both wore different shades of plaid and, though they didn't have mustaches, it must've been several days since either one of them had shaved. Though, Earl had straw colored hair and Otis's looked closer to the shade of Jud's, Claire guessed they were brothers. They looked too alike in the face to be anything else.  
  
"Alright, darlin'," Jud said again, shifting the pool cue from one hand to the other. "Go get a cue of yer own and we'll start this."  
  
Claire did as she was told and took her station back by the pool table.  
  
For almost two hours, the men taught her how to play pool. They taught her ways to hold her cue, how to know which shots were good shots, and which shots were shots you shouldn't take, even if you thought you were going sink several balls because of the dangerous positioning to balls you didn't want to drop to begin with.  
  
Everything they taught her, Claire already knew and, from the way they were playing and what they were showing her, she had a good feeling she was a better pool player than they were. She might've almost felt bad about the fact she was going to hustle them out of their money if it weren't for the fact their hands kept wandering to places they shouldn't as much as their eyes had been when she first walked in the door.  
  
"I want to try playing for money," Claire said, straightening after a deliberately poor shot.  
  
The men exchanged glances.  
  
"You sure, darlin'?" Jud asked. "Yer a new player 'round some old timers. You wouldn't stand a chance against us."  
  
Claire didn't know what expression would look least suspicious, so she just leaned on her pool cue and said, "That would give me incentive to learn faster and do better, don't cha think?"  
  
Jud shrugged as he said, "Alright. It's yer money."  
  
She pulled a wad of cash out of the back pocket of her jeans and set it on the corner of the pool table. She gathered the balls up out of the pockets around the table and placed them in the triangle in the center. She set up the white ball a few inches from the tip of the triangle. She was about to bend over to break the balls when she remembered she couldn't let on just how good she was yet, so she sheepishly stood aside and said, "You first, Jud."  
  
He took her place, bending over the pool table, this pool cue stretched out in front of him and broke the triangle, sinking two balls instantly. He moved around the table, observing the placement of the other balls before he made another move and sank another two balls. It took another two turns before he finally missed.  
  
Claire bit the inside of her lip, partially for show and partially because she wasn't sure she could properly hustle this guy. She wasn't sure she could come out on top. If he was this good, she was going to have to play several games if she wanted to get the kind of money she needed.  
  
"Alright, darlin'," Jud said, straightening. There was a smirk on his lips. "Yer turn."  
  
Observing the pool table, Claire circled it several times before she finally chose a move. She could make one good move. Then she had to fail. Otherwise the guys would pick up on what she was doing. She bent over the table, ignoring the men's stares and the ones that pointed at her. She sank two balls with one move. The men looked shocked. She arranged her face into a similar expression before she found another shot, one that she knew, even if she tried, she had no hope of making, that she missed completely.  
  
"Damn," Jud said, as he went to find a move of his own. "Beginner's luck, eh?"  
  
She grinned and said, "I guess so."  
  
Jud missed his next shot. Claire missed as well. The next shot Jud made. Claire missed again. And she kept missing until the end of the game and Jud scooped up the wad of cash she'd placed on the corner of the table, saying, "Good game, darlin', but next time be more careful about who ya play when you've got this much money in yer pocket."  
  
Claire glanced back at the pool table. "One more game," she said, forcing desperation into her tone. "Just gimme a chance to try to win my money back."  
  
"Alright, darlin'," Jud said, placing her cash back on the corner of the table. He added a wad of his own, saying, "I'll add in my own. Just to make it interesting for ya, okay?"  
  
She smiled at him, but she was certain it was more of a smirk.  
  
Gathering up the balls from the pockets around the table, she placed them back in the triangle near one end of the table before she grabbed her pool cue, bent over the table, and broke the triangle. She didn't bother trying to hide her expertise this time. She let her concentration show. She wanted these men to know just what they were in for. She was going to beat them quickly and effortlessly and they were going to be sorry they ever messed with her.  
  
The game went much as the last one had, only this time it was Claire that was sinking all the balls, making all the shots. It wasn't until she straightened up from her last shot, having sunk four balls at once and was scooping up the cash left on the corner of the pool table that the men finally seemed to come to their sense and realize what had just happened.  
  
"You fucking hustled us," Jud said with drunken disbelief as Claire shoved the cash into her back pocket. "You cheated us out of our money."  
  
Claire turned around and smirked at the men. "Yes," she said, finally dropping the fake southern accent. "I did. But you engaged in sexual harassment of a minor, so I guess we're even." She was eighteen. She wasn't really a minor, but they didn't know that. It would give them incentive to let this lie.  
  
"Yer a little slut!" Jud shouted, pointing at her as she started backing away towards the door. "Yer a little fucking slut!"  
  
Claire only continued smirking. "Just because I dress a certain way and you find me sexually pleasing and I don't give you what you want doesn't mean I'm a slut."  
  
She turned on her heel and left the bar. She could hear the men still shouting at her and she knew if she didn't walk fast, there was a chance they'd follow her out of the bar and try to get exactly what they were looking for. She wasn't going to risk that.  
  
It wasn't until Claire was a block away from the motel she was staying at that she finally slowed her pace and pulled a folded piece of paper out of her other back pocket. She unfolded it. It was a list of names. Some were circled, some were crossed out, others were scribbled out entirely and had been replaced with correct spelling.  
  
It was a list of angels she had killed. Or was going to kill.  
  
She frowned at it.  
  
The angels had fallen two weeks ago. They were all on earth. And, though a good third of the names on the list were crossed out, she felt like she hadn't made any headway at all.  
  
Putting the list back in her pocket, she quickened her pace.  
  
Something told her she was running out of time.


	3. Trois [Jesse]

_Abandoned cabin in the woods  
Appalachian Mountains, North Carolina 2013_  
  
The note glared back at Jesse Turner from its place on the counter, the black words on the page popping out at him, reminding him over and over again that Krissy had gone and done exactly what he'd been hoping she wouldn't. Not because he didn't want to find Claire, but because he knew that he minute Krissy went searching for her, he'd feel he had to go, too. Why should he stay here and wait around for one or both of them to come back when if he went out too they might find Claire that much more quickly?  
  
After reading through the note for the fourth or fifth time, he made an angry noise in the back of his throat, crumpled it into a ball and threw it across the room. He didn't like the way the words seemed to be telling him, yet again, that he wasn't doing enough, that he wasn't good enough, that just sitting here wasn't doing anything.  
  
That he cared too much to feel that way to begin with.  
  
He stood up abruptly and began to pace the living room, running shaking fingers through his hair, tugging at the ends.  
  
Why was it that everyone he cared about, everyone he loved was taken away from him?  
  
 _Because you're evil,_  a voice inside of him whispered.  _You were destined for evil and since evil could not have you, it is going to torment you. It is going to take everything away from you, until evil is all you have left._  
  
He shook his head, closing his eyes tightly, not wanting to believe it. But how could this many bad things happen to one person who'd only been trying to do good for so long without it meaning something other than this was what he was destined for?  
  
That wasn't a question he had a good answer to.  
  
Taking his hands out of his hair and opening his eyes, Jesse stopped pacing the living room and walked over to the window near the bookshelf. He stared out at the summer green leaves, imagining Claire running barefoot through the forest after waking up in Krissy's bedroom. He imagined her looking over her shoulder, making sure no one was following her. He imagined her quickening her pace when she heard them calling for her, wanting to get to the bottom of the hill and out of sight before anyone found her.  
  
He'd known the minute he'd seen the empty bed and the open windows that they weren't going to find her. If Claire had wanted to be found, she would've made it easy for them to find her. The fact they'd had no sign of her in two weeks proved that as well. Claire didn't let anything happen that she didn't want to happen.  
  
Turning his gaze away from the forest, he looked at the armchair that sat by the bookshelf. He remembered seeing Claire sitting in it, curled up with a book, her eyes darting across pages that she turned more quickly than he'd ever seen anyone turn the pages of a book. She must've finished every book on the shelf before she disappeared. She was a fast reader.  
  
Letting out a breath, he closed his eyes as if he were in pain and, even as he did it, he felt ridiculous. In truth, he knew it wasn't really fair or even realistic to say he loved Claire Novak. He'd spent far less time with her than Krissy had. He hadn't even spoken to her. He'd just watched her from afar when he'd been certain she wasn't looking, but now that he thought about it, he was pretty sure she'd known when she was being watched. She wasn't the sort of person to let anything that involved her to go unnoticed.  
  
A conversation he'd had with Krissy only a few days ago popped into his mind.  
  
"You really think going after her is the best idea?" he'd asked. They'd been sitting at the table in the kitchen having breakfast. Krissy was only picking at her food and he was ignoring his entirely. He couldn't remember the last time he'd had a proper meal, but he was pretty sure it'd been before Claire had come into their lives. "Have you ever considered the possibility that she doesn't want to be found?"  
  
"That's the problem," Krissy said, pointing her fork at him, a bit of egg dangling from the end of the tines. "She doesn't want to be found and she's – she's not right, Jesse. She can't be alone. Couldn't you see that when she was here?"  
  
He turned away, pretending to look out the window. He watched the trees sway in the wind. It didn't seem fair to him that they should drag Claire back her against her will, but then he couldn't really say that when he'd been the one that had wanted to take her to the hospital after she fell into her catatonia after the meteor shower. Krissy had said it was angels falling, but he didn't see how that could be possible. How could all of the angels in heaven suddenly drop from the sky to earth? It didn't make sense.  
  
"Besides, weren't you the one that wanted to take her to the hospital after the angels fell?" Krissy said, bringing him out of his thoughts and voicing them at the same time. "You were trying to do what was best for her then and I'm  _telling_  you this is what's best for her now. She needs us. Her being alone right now is just…bad."  
  
Jesse turned back to her. "Why do you think that? Because of what happened after the meteor shower?" He refused to admit they were fallen angels.  
  
"Yes," Krissy said immediately.  
  
"Maybe that was just an isolated incident," he retorted. "Maybe you're wrong and she needs to be alone right now. Maybe she felt like we were imposing on her and invading her privacy. Did you ever think of that?"  
  
Krissy glared. "If that were the case, she wouldn't have stayed as long as she did."  
  
He didn't reply. He knew she was right then just as he knew she was right now. Everything she'd said was right and he'd only had that argument to try to convince himself that he didn't care as much as he did. He'd agreed with her on everything. He knew that they needed to find Claire. He knew that her being alone was bad, but he didn't want to do anything she didn't want them to and he knew that Claire didn't want them to find her. He was sure Krissy knew that too, but Krissy was more concerned with Claire's wellbeing than what she wanted. He knew he should have that priority as well, but he was desperate. For what he couldn't really say, but if she didn't want to be found, he hadn't wanted an excuse to go out and find her.  
  
Now he felt he had to.  
  
For whatever reason, as long as Krissy wasn't out there searching, he hadn't felt he needed to be either. But now that she was gone, now that she'd left, he had to as well. He had go out there and try to find her because now he knew he wasn't doing enough. He couldn't sit around in this cabin anymore and pretend everything was going to be alright.  
  
Jesse pivoted away from the window and the bookshelf. He stared at a spot on the floor, his lips pressed into a thin line as he contemplated his options. His gaze flickered to the crumpled piece of paper that was Krissy's note lying in the corner of the room. He remembered coming home to an empty house less than an hour ago, going into the kitchen, finding the note, reading through it, and then complaining to Ben about what Krissy had just done. He couldn't leave Ben a note. It wouldn't be fair to Ben or to Krissy. He had to tell him he was leaving.  
  
Letting out a long sigh, he left the living room and went to the closet where their weapons were stored, but he didn't grab nearly as many as Krissy had. He took only a shotgun, a handgun, some rocksalt, regular salt, and holy water. He piled all of this along with some clothes and his wallet into a backpack he pulled out of the closet in the room he shared with Ben.  
  
"You're going after them, aren't you," Ben said when Jesse entered the room and opened their closet. It was a statement, not a question. Jesse swallowed and didn't reply. Ben let out a humorless laugh and didn't turn away from whatever he was doing at the desk he was sitting at. "Why does everyone always leave me?"  
  
"I'm not leaving you," Jesse said, automatically defensive, his grip on the backpack tightening ever so slightly.  
  
Now Ben did turn to face him. "What do you call it then?" he asked, his words dripping venom. "Because most of the human population would call you packing up and disappearing after two other people 'leaving'."  
  
Jesse took a deep breath, trying to force himself not to get angry. "I need to go after them. Krissy was right. We need to find Claire and I know where she is."  
  
"How is that possible?" Ben asked. "She didn't leave a note like Krissy did and even then Krissy didn't say where she was going. Besides, I thought you said we shouldn't be looking for Claire because she doesn't want to be found."  
  
He couldn't look Ben in the eyes, so he rearranged what was in the backpack instead. "I didn't mean it," was the only explanation he offered.  
  
"Okay," Ben replied, smirking though his eyes were narrowed. "I see how it is. You didn't mean it and now you suddenly do, so you're going to leave me and get lost with them. Okay that makes perfect sense. Great."  
  
Sighing, Jesse looked up again. "I know you're mad, Ben, but you really don't understand, okay? You really don't. Krissy and I  _have_ to find Claire and Krissy has no idea where to start looking and I do because –"  
  
"Because why?" Ben interjected. "Because you _love_ her? That's not how it works, Jesse."  
  
This time he glared at Ben. "Because Claire and I are alike," he replied, ignoring what Ben had said. "And I know where she'd want to go."  
  
Ben shook his head, turning back to what he was doing on the desk. "Whatever," he said. "Just don't get yourself killed while you're gone. I guess I'll be here until you get back."  
  
Jesse didn't reply this time. He watched Ben's back for several long moments before he hoisted the backpack up onto his shoulder and left the room. He pulled on his boots that he'd kicked off near the door when they'd first come back to the cabin before he opened the door and stepped back outside. He dumped his backpack on the passenger seat of the car they'd managed to drive through the trees back up to the cabin, started it, and headed back the way they'd come.  
  
He hadn't been lying when he'd told Ben that he knew where Claire was because she was like him. That was true. He  _did_  know where Claire was and she  _was_  like him and the more he thought about it, the more he considered where she might've gone, the more convinced he was that she'd hitched a ride to California.  
  
Taking a deep breath as he drove slowly and carefully through the trees down the hill back towards civilization, Jesse hoped he was right. He didn't want to chase Claire all over the country. If he did, there was a very good chance that he wouldn't ever find her and, as he navigated the car from the trees smoothly onto the road, his grip on the steering wheel tightened as he realized that something was telling him that if he didn't find her soon, she wouldn't be around to find anyway.


	4. Quatre [Krissy]

_W New Orleans Motel – French Quarter  
New Orleans, Louisiana 2013_  
  
The neon lights of the French Quarter shops shone into the small dark motel room that Krissy had rented out for the evening, turning everything inside an ominous red. It was raining in New Orleans and the drops pattered against the glass, making the motel room's interior seem even more sinister, but she didn't really notice. She was too exhausted from her trip from North Carolina to Louisiana.  
It had been a lot shorter than she'd thought it would be and yet somehow at the same time it'd been far longer than she'd anticipated as well. Maybe it was because she'd driven through cities rather than out in the open and only stopped once to sleep by the side of the road for a couple of hours before heading back out again.  
  
The motel she was currently staying in had been found after a long hour spent circling around New Orleans, trying to find a place she could stay that was both cheap and didn't have a 'no vacancy' sign glaring out at her from the window of the lobby. Finally, she'd stumbled upon this motel, tucked away in the French Quarter. Initially, Krissy hadn't wanted to stay in a motel that was in the French Quarter. She'd read enough books and seen enough movies to know that it wasn't the safest of places, but when it looked like she didn't have much choice, she parked in the parking lot, gotten her bags out of the trunk, locked her car doors, double checked that they were locked and checked into the motel.  
  
The man at the desk in the small lobby building didn't believe she was eighteen. She looked closer to sixteen he said and even after she handed him her driver's license, he still thought it was fake. She still wasn't sure why he'd rented her a room, but she didn't particularly care. She was looking forward to sleeping on a mattress for the first time in two days.  
  
Dumping her backpack and duffle bag on the floor, Krissy collapsed onto the edge of the bed. She set her cellphone to charge on the nightstand, kicked off her boots, and was asleep before her head even hit the pillow.  
  
She wasn't sure what time it was when she woke up to her phone buzzing noisily on the nightstand. She wanted to ignore it. She wanted to fall back into the dreamless sleep she'd just been rudely awakened from. She wanted to let it go to voicemail. She could call back whoever was calling her later. She was about to let that happen too, but then she remembered the day she'd left the cabin in the woods. She remembered calling Dean Winchester about Claire's disappearance, begging him to give her any information he might have about her or her whereabouts.  
  
Dean could be calling her back.  
  
Krissy knew it was important, she knew she had to see who was calling her, but she didn't want to. She could always call Dean back later.  
  
The phone buzzed insistently, seemingly louder than before.  
  
Groaning in protest, Krissy rolled over and snatched the phone up off the nightstand. She didn't check the caller ID before she tapped the green talk button and held the phone up to her ear, saying in a voice that clearly belonged to someone who was still half asleep, "Hello?"  
  
"Krissy?"  
  
The voice on the other end of the line belonged to Dean Winchester.  
  
Pushing herself up, she turned on the lamp on the nightstand. She rubbed at her eyes and cleared her throat in an attempt to make herself sound more awake as she said, "Dean? Hi. Did you get my message?"  
  
"Yeah," Dean replied, sounding grim. "What was the name of that girl?"  
  
It took Krissy a minute to realize that she hadn't said Claire's name once in the message. "Claire," she finally said, swallowing. "Claire Novak."  
  
"And she's killing angels?" he asked.  
  
"I think so," she replied. "I mean, she seemed pretty…upset about the angels falling, but not like she was sad for them or anything. It was more like she was…connected to them. Like what happens to them happens to her. Whatever she's doing now…I don't think it's good for her. She isn't stable. She –" Krissy stopped speaking as a memory came unbidden into her mind.  
  
 _"Do you have any idea where he might be?"_  
  
"I think he's with those hunters that helped me and my mom. The Winchesters. They're famous in the hunting community. They're good people, but…but if they get in the way of me killing Castiel, I'll kill them, too."  
  
Krissy swallowed hard. "Dean, if she finds you, you can't hurt her.  
  
"Why do you say that?" The words were laced with confusion  
  
Taking a deep shuddering breath, Krissy said, "Claire wants to kill Castiel.  
  
There was silence on the other end of the line. Then Dean asked, his voice measured, "Why do you think she wants to kill Cas?  
  
"Why do you think?" she responded before she could stop herself. Her voice held all of the bitterness she felt on Claire's behalf "She hates him for what he did to her dad and how he ruined her life and her family. She blames him for everything that's gone wrong in her life and I get it. Castiel is responsible for most of, if not all of it."  
  
Another silence.  
  
"What do you want me to do, Krissy?" Dean asked, sounding annoyed. "Tell you that you're right? That Cas messed up her life and that gives her the right to come kill him?"  
  
"That's not what I meant –" she began, but he cut her off.  
  
"I'm not going to let her kill my best friend," he said sharply.  
  
"Then just don't hurt her!" Krissy half-shouted into the phone.  
  
For a moment, they were both quiet, the only sound that of their breathing. Then, swallowing, Krissy added, "I need to find her and-and I don't want her to kill Castiel either. I don't think that'll help her. I just want to bring her home.  
  
"And you want to use Cas as bait," Dean said, still sounding perturbed.  
  
Krissy swallowed again. She hadn't even realized that was what she wanted until Dean said it. She felt herself shaking from the intensity of the conversation, from the emotions that always overwhelmed her whenever she thought about or talked about Claire, but when she spoke, her voice was stead. "Yes."  
  
There was another silence, but it was shorter than the last two.  
  
"I hope you know what you're doing."  
  
Then the line went dead.


	5. Cinq [Claire]

_Ash Street_  
 _Palo Alto, California 2013_  
  
The moon was so bright it lit up the streets of Palo Alto so completely, the streetlights on every corner were hardly necessary. People walking out of the bars and shops lining these streets pointed up, all wanting to bring attention to the unnatural brightness of the full moon.  
  
Very few people weren't gazing up at the sky, wondering what was making this month's full moon brighter than normal, so the few who weren't staring up at the sky stuck out like a sore thumb. One of these people was a man dressed in a gray business suit, carrying a leather briefcase in one hand, his dark eyes fixated on the world immediately in front of him rather than the anomaly in the sky. He'd seen enough of the sky in his life and looking up at it now, he knew, would only make his current reality more painful.  
  
If the man had been himself – chestnut-haired Paul Drake, age thirty-five, employed at a forgettable company in an equally forgettable office building – he would've been staring up at the sky along with everyone else, excited to spend the evening on his roof with the telescope his father had given him before he passed away.  
  
But Paul Drake was all but dead now.  
  
At the end of August, after that meteor shower that was seen all across the world, Paul Drake had learned something: angels were real and he was a vessel. It hadn't taken much convincing for Paul to accept and allow the angel whose vessel he was to possess him. Paul didn't have any living family and, though he'd never really been religious, he believed in angels. He believed his father was an angel and when the angel came to him, asking to use his body as a vessel here on earth, Paul had agreed without second thought. He was certain the only angel that would ask to use his body was his father.  
  
But that was three weeks ago. The angel that had possessed Paul had been using his body for three weeks and, after being pushed back to the edges of his own mind for so long, he wasn't himself anymore. He was hardly there. The angel had all but taken over.  
  
The angel, Nithael, was still living Paul's life. He got up at seven a.m. and went to Paul's work every day. He ate the microwave meals in Paul's refrigerator. He watched Sunday night football with Paul's coworkers. And he flirted with the cute receptionist that sat in the lobby of Paul's office building. Nithael listened for news of other angels. He tried to get information about the whereabouts of Castiel, the angel who had made all of the rest of them fall, wanting his revenge as much as the next angel. And he listened for news that might mean they'd somehow found their way back into heaven, but he was coming up dry with all three of those endeavors, so he continued to live Paul's life because what else was he going to do?  
  
Taking a sharp left, Nithael turned down an alleyway that he'd learned from Paul's memories was a shortcut to his apartment. At first, he'd been wary of using the alley. He wasn't stupid or naïve. He'd been watching humans long enough to know they weren't the kindest group of beings and anyplace dark and full of shadows was a place to avoid. However, after using it one night in an attempt to get back to the apartment more quickly after a long and exhausting day at work with nothing happening, Nithael began to use it every night.  
  
So he was hardly expecting the usually empty, silent alleyway to be blocked halfway down by a girl with hair that shone like molten starlight in the bright light of the moon that managed to shine down into the darkness.  
  
At first, he couldn't see her face because she was staring at the pavement, but when she lifted her head, tilting it to one side as she did so, his eyes widened and he took a half-step back. When her eyes caught the moonlight, he saw something in them, and for the first time since his fall to earth, Nithael felt the ice cold touch of fear.  
  
"What's your name?" The girl with the hair made of starlight asked.  
  
The angel's hands clenched into fists and his Adam's apple bobbed in his throat as he swallowed. "Paul Drake," he said.  
  
The girl smirked. She knew it was a lie. "Your  _real_  name."  
  
The fear in the pit of his stomach grew. He knew he shouldn't reply. He should turn around and leave the alleyway. That would be the smart thing to do. Anything could happen in this alley and no one out on the street would know until the morning. Maybe not until even after that. Was that really what he wanted to happen?  
  
Suddenly, he felt ridiculous. This girl was half his size. Even if he weren't an angel, he would still have the upper hand. His eyes narrowed and his hands clenched into fists and he pushed the fear back down. Giving her his true name wouldn't be dangerous. If she tried anything, he could easily get her out of the way. If she was looking for death, he would have no problem sending her back to heaven, even if he couldn't get there himself.  
  
"Nithael," he said, straightening to his full height.  
  
The girl's smile didn't waver. Maybe it was just the shadows or the way the moon shone into the alley, but there was something sinister to her grin. If he hadn't known any better, Nithael would've thought she was a demon. However, for all he knew she was. Perhaps the fall had destroyed his ability to distinguish demon from regular human as well.  
  
"You're on my list," the girl replied. He watched as her smile grew wider by only a fraction before an angel blade appeared in her hand and she rushed at him.  
  
Nithael side-stepped her easily, but she was coming back at him as soon as she realized she'd missed him. He grit his teeth, throwing out his hands and trying to summon light before he remembered he couldn't. He put his arms up in a defense position only a moment before she slammed into him, the angel blade tearing through the sleeve of his suit, but not getting anywhere near his heart.  
  
Letting out a cry of frustration, the girl wrenched the angel blade out from between his arms and jumped back. She clutched the blade in her hand so tightly her knuckles turned white and it shook. Her face was a mask of anger and hatred. It came off her in waves and it was then that Nithael sensed something else as well.  
  
On the fingers of the hand that held the blade, she wore titanium rings with blue gemstones in the centers. He stared at them. When they hit the moonlight, they glowed and the stones seemed to swirl and give off their own light for a few moments after they were moved back into the darkness. His eyes widened and he looked at the girl. Did she know what those were? She must. But did she know what they were doing? What they were going to do?  
  
But in the next moment it didn't matter. He forgot all about it because in that moment, he'd let his guard down and that was all she needed. She rushed at him and thrust the angel blade into his chest, right through his heart. She closed her eyes as his grace rushed out of him, lighting up the alley so bright for a moment that it scorched the walls of the buildings around them and the pavement beneath them. Then the night was silent again and Claire Novak was left as alone as she had been before the angel had entered the alley.  
  
All of the breath left her in a  _whoosh!_  as she fell to her knees beside the body of the angel. Its grace was lingering inside its mouth. She'd learned from her last several angelic encounters that was where a grace congealed after an angel was killed. She pressed her forehead against the wall, breathing heavily, and watched the grace collected in a small glowing ball. Slowly it hardened into what looked like an uncut stone. She pulled it out of the angel's mouth and pocketed it before pushing herself to her feet. She staggered for a couple of steps, an arm stretched out in front of her, ready to catch herself if she fell, her free hand pressed her pounding forehead. By the time she reached the mouth of the alley, the dizziness and ache in her head was gone and she straightened, heading back the way she'd come. She only looked back at the alley once.  
  
It was shortly after she'd left the cabin in the woods and killed an angel for the first time in nearly three years that she found out about how she could collect their graces. She'd never known it before, but after one particularly exhausting hunt, she saw a gem sitting just behind the lips of one angel's open mouth. She left the first few, but when she realized what they were, she began to take them, turning each one in to a ring. She kept all of them in a small messenger bag she carried with her, but always wore her most recent two or three on her fingers. She was certain the angels knew what they were and she wanted them to be afraid. She wasn't nearly as powerful as they were and yet she had killed so many of them.  
  
Claire smirked as she walked quickly down the sidewalk, back towards her motel.  
  
She was far more powerful than anyone had ever given her credit for.  
  
Claire coughed.  
  
There was only one drawback to keeping so many graces near a vessel.  
  
She pulled her hand back from her mouth and looked it. A splotch of red barely illuminated by moonlight was now the shining center of her palm. She winced.  
  
It was killing her.  
  
When she'd first begun coughing up blood, Claire had thought she'd just gotten sick and there was nothing she could do except wait for herself to die. However, after an encounter with one particularly talkative and angry angel, she learned that what was happening to her was a result of keeping so many graces in one place as well as being a vessel. She knew the smart thing to do would be to take a trip to the beach and dump all of the graces into the ocean, but she didn't. She wanted to keep them with her. All she had to do was stay alive long enough to finish her list and kill Castiel. Once she did that, she could die. She didn't care. A part of her had been wanting to die for a very long time and this was as good a way as any.  
  
The bright light of the moon illuminated her path back to her motel. She was exhausted and wanted to collapse on the pavement and sleep there, but she wasn't stupid. She knew what could happen if she did that and she was certain the minute she thought sleeping on the cold, hard ground was a good idea, she'd realize that she could walk the extra couple of blocks to where there was a soft feather mattress waiting for her.  
  
She was turning the corner of one street and heading down the next where her motel waited for her at the end, when she heard footsteps behind her. She stopped and turned around, but saw no one there. Her eyes darted around the dark, deserted street. The only sounds she could hear was the rush of traffic from the nearby freeway and the sounds of insects in the park next to the motel.  
  
Giving the area around her one last look, she turned on her heel and continued back down the street, but she hadn't been walking for more than ten seconds when she heard the footsteps behind her. Again, she whirled around, but, just like before, there was no one there.  
  
Claire took a deep steadying breath. She coughed into the crook of her elbow, splattering it with her blood. She didn't bother to wipe it off. It glistened in the glow of the streetlights and the silver moonlight and colored the tips of the strands of hair that got caught in it a bright crimson.  
  
She was being followed and whoever it was, was going to be in for a big surprise.


	6. Six [Jesse]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I highly recommend listening to the song Torn Apart by Bastille on repeat while reading this chapter.

_California Avenue  
Palo Alto, California 2013_  
  
There were hardly any shadows due to the brightness of the moon in the alley where Jesse knelt, watching Claire kill an angel. She fought with a quickness and grace he'd never seen in anyone before. She was a better hunter than he, Krissy, and Ben combined. He watched as the angel collapsed. He covered his eyes as a blinding light lit up the alley for a moment. Once it disappeared, he looked back at her and watched as she pulled a blue gemstone from the angel's mouth and pocketed it.  
  
It had taken Jesse less than two weeks to find Claire Novak. He'd driven to southern California and after asking around San Diego and coming up with nothing, he'd begun asking around the suburbs. Finally, he heard news of a girl who had hustled a few pool players at a bar in Anaheim. No one knew who she was or where she'd gone, but the description they gave matched the one he had of Claire in his head, so he started asking around the Anaheim motels. One not too far from the bar said they'd seen a girl matching Claire's description.  
  
"She left a few days ago," the girl sitting behind the desk in the lobby had told him. "She didn't say where she was going or anything."  
  
After another day searching around the Anaheim area, Jesse moved away and began asking in nearby cities and towns. Finally, he arrived at Palo Alto and it was just by sheer happenstance that he found Claire. She was walking down the street as he was getting out of his car to go into a small twenty-four hour diner for some food. He'd immediately followed her and now here he was, crouching in an alley, hoping she didn't know he was following her.  
  
As he watched, she got to her feet, her hand pressed to her forehead. She staggered a few steps as she headed towards the mouth of the alley and paused only once to cough.  
  
Jesse stayed silent and hidden throughout it all and wondered what was wrong with her. Why was she suddenly weakened and coughing? Had she gotten sick since she'd left them? And if so how? These were questions he didn't have answers to and, frankly, he wasn't really sure he wanted them.  
  
His eyes flickered back to the fallen angel, still lying in an awkward position against the alley wall. Whoever found him would never know he'd once been an angel. All they would see was a man and that was all Jesse saw now: a man who was in the wrong place at the wrong time and, as a result, had become a victim of the wrath Claire carried like a weight inside her.  
  
Claire disappeared from the mouth of the alley and onto the street. Without making a sound, Jesse stood. He walked silently from his hiding place to the entrance to the alley and looked down the street. He could see Claire clearing the corner just up ahead. He followed after her. It wasn't until they were on a deserted and much quieter street than the last few that she finally seemed to hear him. She stopped and just before she turned around, he ducked into the shadowed doorway of a building, hoping the darkness was deep enough that she wouldn't noticed him. He did the same thing the second time she turned around and this time stayed in the shadows until she got much farther ahead of him. However, as it turned out, they didn't have much farther to go. Claire stopped at the motel at the end of the street and went inside room 204.  
  
The minute the door shut, Jesse rushed out from his hiding place and across the street. He was reaching out to open the door when it occurred to him that this was a very bad idea. He'd just watched the girl in this motel room murder a full grown man and walk away without a scratch on her. Was sneaking into her motel room really the smartest thing to do?  
  
Maybe not.  
  
Probably not.  
  
Almost definitely not.  
  
But Claire needed to come home. She needed her family.  
  
So he was going to do it anyway.  
  
Letting out a breath, Jesse didn't think to knock. He turned the surprisingly unlocked knob and peered into the darkness of the motel room. None of the lights were on, but he didn't need them to be to know that the room was empty. The triangle of light that shone in from outside illuminated the messy unmade bed, the backpack sitting on the chair in the kitchenette, and the closed curtains of the window next to the door.  
  
"Claire?" he called softly.  
  
No one replied.  
  
He swallowed, puzzled, and stepped into the room shutting the door behind him. He'd seen her come in here. He knew that. And there was no way she could've left this room. He would've seen if she'd gone back out.  
  
Suddenly, something slammed into him. He felt an arm press up against his throat as his head cracked against the door and he saw stars. When they'd cleared and his eyes had adjusted to the darkness, he saw Claire had him pressed up against the door, an angel blade held in one hand, the tip pointing at this throat. Her other arm was pressed against his throat, hard enough that it was uncomfortable, but loose enough that he could breathe. He held his hands up in a 'don't shoot the messenger' gesture and looked into her face, twisted with rage.  
  
Even in the darkness, he knew he'd been right.  
  
She didn't want to be found.  
  
"What the fuck are you doing here?" she hissed, her voice barely above a whisper. She didn't move to turn on the lights.  
  
"I came looking for you after Krissy did," he replied honestly, his voice calm despite the position he was in.  
  
"I didn't want you coming to look for me," she replied, her arm pressing harder against his throat, her grip on the angel blade tightening.  
  
Jesse scowled at her. "Well, I did. And now here I am. I found you. You're too predictable, Claire."  
  
"Krissy didn't find me," she retorted.  
  
"Krissy doesn't know you," he shot back.  
  
Claire took a breath, her lips pressed into a thin line. She wanted to disagree with him or maybe she wanted to defend Krissy, but she didn't know what to say. Jesse could see this all going through her mind in the instant before she finally took her arm off his throat and lowered her angel blade. She walked over to the backpack and put it inside, but didn't turn on the light. Her hair was so close to white that it almost glowed in the darkness.  
  
"Why did you come looking for me?" Claire finally asked. She didn't turn to look at him. She was still fiddling with her backpack.  
  
For a moment, he was silent. He stared at the muted light that shone through the closed curtains onto the motel room's carpet. Then, finally, he looked back up at her. "For the same reason Krissy is still trying to find you," he said, surprised when his voice didn't waver. He swallowed hard. "Because I love you."  
  
It sounded ridiculous even as he said it and he hated himself for saying it that way. This wasn't a teenage romance novel. This was so far from a teenage romance novel that this line put into their lives was almost laughable. But it was the truth. Krissy was looking for Claire because she loved her. He'd been looking for Claire because he loved her too. But that wasn't the only reason and he didn't bother elaborating. He had a feeling that after spending two years in an insane asylum, Claire wouldn't like being told they thought she was unstable and needed to come home and not spend any more time alone.  
  
Claire let out a bitter, hollow laugh.  
  
Whatever reaction, he'd been expecting from her, this was not it.  
  
"That's not possible," she finally said. She still hadn't turned to look at him, but she was no longer messing with the backpack. "No one can love me. My mother didn't after my father died. And after what happened in that…place." He watched her shudder in the dim light, knowing she was thinking of the asylum. "No one can love me."  
  
The first time she'd said it, she'd spoken bitterly, but the second time, she said it softly, almost sadly and remorsefully as though she wished it could be different. Her shoulders slumped and she let out a soft sigh, barely audible from Jesse's position across the room.  
  
For a moment, they stayed that way: Jesse staring at Claire's back, Claire refusing to turn to look at him, both silent.  
  
It could've been minutes or hours they were standing that way, Jesse didn't know. He could hear the clock ticking on the wall, but he didn't look at it. Then, finally, his hands clenching into fists, he came to a decision. He crossed the room and turned Claire to face him.  
  
He was startled to see there were tears on her cheeks. This girl that stood before him now was not the one that Krissy had brought back from the asylum all those months ago. That girl wouldn't have shown him any sort of weakness, not even if they were in the same room. She would've been afraid he would see. The fact she was letting him see now solidified the decision he'd made when he'd been staring at her slumped shoulders from across the room.  
  
Tilting her face up so he could look into her eyes, Jesse said, "Let me prove you wrong."  
  
And he pressed his lips to hers.  
  
The kiss started out gentle and caring, but it became the exact opposite really quick. Claire's fingers ran up into his hair and knotted in it so tightly it hurt, but he didn't complain. He wrapped his arms around her and lifted her, pressing her against the wall. She wrapped her legs around his waist.  
Their lips kept crashing together, but it was so much sloppier than before. Sometimes his lips missed and hit the corner of her mouth or her chin and then he stopped trying to aim for her mouth and kissed a line down her neck to her collar bone, sucking a bruise into the skin there, tugging at the edge of her shirt while she pulled impatiently at the leather belt cinched around his waist.  
  
They moved from the wall to bed where Jesse pulled his shirt up over his head and threw it to the floor and Claire continued fumbling with his belt until he pulled that off himself as well. His lips locked with hers again and she pushed down his pants and he took off her shirt, kicking off his shoes at the same time.  
  
He knew as he took off her underwear, but didn't bother with her bra, and she only pulled him out of his boxers rather than take them off, that this didn't mean anything. What was happening right here and now meant nothing. They were doing this for all the wrong reasons. This wasn't a love story. This  _wasn't_  a teen romance novel. They were lonely. That was all this was.  
  
But maybe that was just what they were telling themselves.  
  
Jesse held Claire as he moved against her and her nails dug into his back as they both gasped and clutched at each other. They didn't say anything. They barely made a sound, but neither of them were gentle. Claire bit his lip so hard she drew blood. Jesse bruised her hips. But that only made them smile. They were rough children, born into a rough life and hewn from it too and why should their sex be any different?  
  
When it was over and they lay together on the small bed, side by side, they didn't say anything. They didn't know what the morning would bring. They didn't know if they'd deem this a mistake or something that should've happened a long time ago, but in the dark of the motel room, it didn't matter. And that was how they fell asleep.


	7. Sept [Krissy]

_North Hazel Street  
Pontiac, Illinios 2013_  
  
The early morning sunlight painted the road, the grass framing it, and the pale blue sky and brilliant orange-pink, giving the world a fresh look, like this new day was more than just a new day. It was a new beginning. The sun reflected off the driver's side mirror of one of the cars on the road this early and into the eyes of Krissy Chambers. She squinted against the light and up the freeway to her new destination.  
  
The night she'd spoken to Dean, she'd decided that she needed to figure out where Claire had gone first before she could figure out a way to lure her out of hiding and bring her back home and the best way to do that was to ask people who knew Claire better than she did where they  _thought_  she might have gone. The only person Krissy could come up with was Claire's mother and, though she didn't know how long it had been since they'd seen each other, she had a feeling that Amelia Novak would know more about her daughter than Krissy did or than Claire gave her real credit for.  
  
She'd texted Dean her idea before she'd packed up the motel room she'd rented and left. The last thing she'd wanted to do was get back on the road so soon, but she wanted to get to where Amelia Novak currently lived quickly, so she'd stopped at a gas station and bought herself a whole pack of energy drinks before going back on the road.  
  
 _This can't be healthy,_  she'd thought to herself every time she'd finished one can and started on another, but she needed to find Claire. She didn't know why she felt this urgency, but it was what was keeping her going, trying to get to the girl who'd vanished two weeks ago.  
  
It took her another hour to get anywhere near civilization and another thirty minutes after that to reach Pontiac, Illinois. She'd looked up Amelia's address from Claire's old asylum records. She'd brought those with her just in case they would come in handy and now she was glad she had. The manila folder lay open on the passenger seat, the Novak's address circled in red ink. The rest of the paper was covered in energy drink stains.  
  
For another half an hour after that, Krissy drove through random neighborhoods, getting herself lost over and over again as she took wrong turns in an attempt to get to where Amelia Novak lived.  
  
At least that was what she told herself, but in reality, Krissy knew she was just prolonging the inevitable. Whatever conversation she had with Claire's mother wasn't going to be one she enjoyed and she was putting it off for as long as she could.  
  
Finally, after another hour of aimless driving, she pulled up in front of Amelia Novak's house. From what she could glean from Claire's asylum records, the house had once been hers, too. It had also once been Jimmy Novak's home. But that was a long time ago.  
  
Putting the car in park and turning off the ignition, she stared up at the façade. It was painted a dark brown with white trim. There was a large porch and a set of three cement steps leading up to the front door. On the door was a wreath decked out in autumn colors. She wasn't sure if Mrs. Novak was planning for the season ahead or if she just hadn't taken it down since last year. She wasn't sure which was more sad: the implication that Mrs. Novak didn't wanted anything to change in case her daughter decided to wander home or the idea that she'd given up on that ever happening and was now just trying to get through the seasons as quickly as possible.  
  
Krissy got out of the car. She left the asylum records on the passenger seat and locked the doors behind her. She strode up the walk, shoving her hands into her pockets, and stared up at the house, trying to guess which one of the windows on the second floor belonged to Claire's old bedroom. She wondered if Claire's room looked the same as it had the day she left or if Mrs. Novak had converted it into an office or home theater. She reached the door and pressed the small button for the doorbell before standing back to wait.  
  
It didn't take long before she heard the unbolting of latches and turning of locks. Vaguely, she remembered Claire telling her about what had happened when her father had come home, about the demon that possessed her mother and tried to kill her, about the angels that had tried afterwards, about Castiel possessing her and only leaving her after her father begged him to take him instead. She wondered how much of that incident Amelia Novak remembered and then wondered if she really thought deadbolts and door locks would keep angels and demons out or if they were there to help her sleep better at night.  
  
When the door finally opened, Krissy saw a strawberry blonde woman with a face prematurely lined. There were streaks of gray in her hair and, though Krissy didn't think she was older than forty, she looked closer to fifty or sixty. There was a deadness and tiredness to her eyes that made Krissy feel incredibly sorry for her. This woman had been through more than she deserved. First her husband had disappeared, then her daughter. Now she was alone, wandering through life, wondering where it'd all gone wrong.  
  
"Amelia Novak?" Krissy asked tentatively, though this woman couldn't be anyone else.  
  
The woman nodded.  
  
Krissy swallowed. "My name is Krissy Chambers. Is it okay if I come in?"  
  
"I'm not interested in anything you're selling," Mrs. Novak said.  
  
Taking a breath, Krissy clenched her hands into fists in her pockets. The air outside was cold this far north. Autumn was already in the air. The leaves were already beginning to turn from green to gold. "I'm not selling anything," she said. "I need to talk to you. About your daughter, Claire."  
  
This caught Mrs. Novak's attention. She'd been staring at Krissy's brown leather boots, but when Krissy mentioned Claire's name, she looked up. Her eyes were wide with shock, but her lips were pressed tightly together. She didn't seem to know which question to ask first.  
  
"It'd be easier if I came in," Krissy said softly.  
  
Amelia unlocked the screen door and held it and the wood door open for Krissy. She stepped over the threshold and into the house.  
  
The inside of the house was just as grand as the outside, but it looked like what Krissy had imagined a middle class suburban home would look like: hardwood floors, carpeting under the coffee table in the living room and under the dining table in the dining room, pastel couches, vases full of fake flowers, walls covered with artwork by artists the members of the household didn't know the names of. Krissy compared Claire to the house and couldn't even imagine her having lived here. She wondered if Claire had ever been the girl that actually belonged between these four walls.  
  
"Would you like anything to drink?" Amelia Novak asked, walking slowly towards the living room while Krissy took her shoes off near the door. "I have water and coffee. I might have something else too."  
  
Krissy braced herself against the door as she kicked off her shoes, but looked up and forced a smile at Mrs. Novak's question. "No, thank you," she said.  
  
Once her shoes were off, she noticed how Amelia was standing, turning her hands over each other, biting her lip. She wanted to ask what she wanted to know about Claire, if she'd seen Claire. Krissy decided at that moment, she'd tell her everything. At this point, Amelia deserved to know everything.  
  
"Why don't we sit down?" she suggested softly.  
  
Amelia nodded, glancing towards the living room. "Yeah," she said, her own voice soft. "Yeah, I guess that'd be a good idea."  
  
Leading the way into the pastel colored living room, Amelia Novak sat down on one of the two love seats that were facing each other over the coffee table. Krissy sat down on the edge of the other one, clasping her hands on her knees.  
  
"Have you seen Claire? Is she alright? What's happened to her? Do you know where she is now?" The questions burst forth. It was clear Mrs. Novak had reached her limit and couldn't hold back any longer.  
  
Krissy took a breath. She didn't know which order to answer them in. She didn't know if it'd be best to let her know she'd seen her daughter and she'd been okay then or if she let her know she'd lost her and was trying to find her. In the end she decided it was easiest to start with the good news.  
  
"Yes, I've seen Claire," she began. "I found her a few months back at an asylum in New Orleans. She was trying to kill herself repeatedly and…"  
She trailed off. She wondered how much Mrs. Novak knew about the supernatural world. She knew of the existence of angels and demons, but did she understand graces? She wanted to keep this conversation short. And an explanation of what a grace was and how it worked and what it was doing to her daughter might not be a good idea. She swallowed and continued, skipping ahead.  
  
"She didn't succeed. I broke her out of the asylum because it wasn't helping her. I brought her back to my house for a while, but then she ran away. She was alright when I had her, but…not when she disappeared. I don't know where she is now and that's why I'm here, Mrs. Novak. I know you haven't seen your daughter in years, but I need to know anything you might know about her and about where you think she might've gone. I think something bad is going to happen to her if I don't find her, so I need your help."  
  
Amelia Novak let out a humorless laugh that sounded almost identical to Claire's. "Why do you think I'd have any idea where she is?" Krissy blinked. Out of all of the reactions she'd expected from Mrs. Novak, this wasn't one of them. "As you just said, I haven't seen my daughter in years. Why in the world would I have any idea where she's gotten to? I knew where she was for two years and I couldn't visit her because of the rules of the asylum and the distance between there and here and then a few months ago, I got a call, telling me she'd disappeared and I wondered where she'd crop up next.  
And now, here you are, knocking on my door and telling me you've lost her and are looking for her now. When are you going to figure it out?" Mrs. Novak leaned towards Krissy, the look in her eyes one of cynicism mixed with what could only be described as hate. "You're not going to find my daughter if she doesn't want to be found."  
  
Krissy's eyes left Mrs. Novak's face. She stared at the coffee table, at the magazines that were years old, at the fake flowers in the glass vase, at the small little bowl of candy that was probably long since stale. She remembered the fight she'd had with Jesse, the one where he'd said those exact same words. She knew they were both right. Claire probably didn't want to be found, but that didn't change the fact she needed to find her, so she looked up again and squared her jaw.  
  
"I'm well aware that Claire probably doesn't want to be found," she said. "She's killing angels somewhere right now. She hates angels because of what they did to your husband, Jimmy Novak." Amelia Novak flinched at his name and Krissy felt a small spark of satisfaction. "They took away any sort of normal life she could've had and for that she hates them and, honestly, I don't blame her. The reason she hasn't come home is because that was the life you tried to force her into when it was blatantly obvious that wasn't the life she could have anymore, so she left and she hasn't come back. If I didn't feel like something bad was going to happen to her, Mrs. Novak, I'd leave her, but the fact of the matter is I do feel like something bad is going to happen to her and the only way I can stop it is if you tell me where you think she might be so I can try to find her before whatever bad thing is going to happen to her finds her first."  
  
The hate and cynicism seemed to melt from Amelia's eyes, leaving that dead look that Krissy had first found her with. She let out a heavy breath and sat back on the couch, glancing off to the left at something Krissy couldn't see. When she finally looked back up at her, she said, "You really think something bad is going to happen to her?"  
  
Krissy nodded once.  
  
Mrs. Novak let out another breath, looking away again. "I see," she said and for several long moments after she spoke Krissy thought that was all she was  _going_  to say, but then finally she added, "Claire always talked about how much she hated the winters here when she was a little girl. Even when she stopped…talking as much after Jimmy disappeared…she still managed to let me know how much she hated the cold. If I ever had to guess at where she was, I'd say somewhere far south where winter and snow don't exist. Probably not somewhere humid, though. She hated the humidity of summer as much as she hated the cold."  
  
One last time, Amelia Novak looked up at Krissy and this time there was a wild, intent look in her eyes. Her hand flashed out and her fingers curled tightly around Krissy's wrist, pulling her close, almost off the couch. Krissy gasped at the tightness of her grip. It almost hurt. Mrs. Novak said, "You find her. You find her and you bring her back to your home, safe. I don't care where she is or if I never get to speak to her again as long as she's safe."  
  
Krissy was holding her breath, now half scared of the woman sitting across from her, but she nodded again. "I'll call you and let you know when I've found her," she promised.  
  
Amelia released her. She didn't bother to write down her number, but Krissy didn't think she needed it. She was pretty sure it was in Claire's asylum file. Mrs. Novak had probably already guessed Krissy had some sort of access to that since she'd found her address.  
  
Swallowing hard, Krissy stood, her eyes still on Mrs. Novak. She'd long outstayed her welcome. It was time for her to leave.  
  
Mrs. Novak didn't see her to the door and Krissy didn't expect her to. When she reached the door, she turned back to look at the woman, sitting forlornly on her couch, still staring at some spot on the coffee table, the dead look back in her eyes.  
  
And though, in that moment, Krissy had never felt more sorry for her, she was not sorry for her visit. She knew where Claire was. There was only one state Krissy could think of that was both warm and had low humidity.  
  
California.


	8. Huit [Claire]

_Travelodge Palo Alto  
Palo Alto, California 2013_  
  
The sensation of waking up in the arms of someone else was completely foreign to Claire and it was for this reason when she started awake after the night she spent with Jesse, she almost jumped out of the bed. It was only the remembrance that she needed to get up quietly if she wanted to be gone before he woke up that kept her from doing just that.  
  
Swallowing, her eyes darted from the early afternoon sunlight streaming in through the motel room's window to behind her. She couldn't see him from the angle she was lying, but she knew he was behind her. She could feel his chest against her back, his arm curled around her torso. He was breathing the soft even breaths of sleep, fluttering the wisps of hair that rested on her cheek.  
  
Moving slowly, she extricated herself from Jesse's grasp. When she felt his arm slump from her body back onto the mattress, she froze, holding her breath, waiting for the quick intake of breath that would signal he'd woken up. When that didn't happen, she let out a breath of her own and began picking her clothes up that had been thrown to the floor the night before.  
  
It was surprisingly hard discerning her clothes from Jesse's. They wore the same colors: black, navy blue, olive green. Dark colors. She smiled slightly and wondered what a psychiatrist might say about that.  
  
She was surprised to find her panties near the kitchenette and wondered vaguely how they'd gotten all the way over there. She didn't remember Jesse throwing them across the room, but then the room had been dark and she didn't really remember that much of the night before anyway.  
  
It'd all happened so quickly. She didn't regret it. Not in the sense that she hadn't wanted it to happen. The only thing she regretted was she knew it'd meant far more to Jesse than it had to her.  
  
When she closed her eyes and thought about the person she loved, it wasn't his face that popped into her mind.  
  
It was Krissy's.  
  
She mentally shook herself and swallowed hard.  
  
She couldn't allow herself to think like that anymore.  
  
Pulling on her pants, Claire began quickly darting around the room, picking up the things she'd set out when she'd first moved in a couple days ago. She didn't think the man who owned the motel was going to be pleased when he found out she was leaving almost a week earlier than she said she was.  
  
"Where are you going?"  
  
Claire froze in the middle of zipping up her backpack. She stopped and turned to face Jesse. He was propped up on one arm, his head resting in his hand and he was giving her a smug smile, clearly happy at having caught her in the act of trying to leave.  
  
Crossing her arms over her chest, she stepped so her backpack was obscured from his field of vision. "I'm not leaving," she said, though it was pretty clear that was what she'd been trying to do only a moment before.  
  
Jesse raised an eyebrow. "Really? So why were you running around the room getting dressed and piling your things in your backpack?"  
  
Claire pressed her lips into a thin line. "You weren't asleep," she accused.  
  
"No," he said as though this should've been obvious. "I've gotten really good at faking that. It helps when you know someone wants to say something to someone else and you know they'll say it right in front of you simply because they think you're asleep."  
  
She sighed and looked away, trying to hide her frustration. She should've known he could've been faking it. He was a hunter too. And that was most definitely the sort of thing hunters knew how to do.  
  
"Okay," she said, working hard to keep the annoyance out of her voice. "You caught me trying to leave. Why do you care if I leave anyway?"  
  
"I didn't just travel over a thousand miles to spend the night with you, Claire," he replied, his voice suddenly serious.  
  
Her hands clenched into fists. "Why then?"  
  
He didn't answer. He only stared at her with a look that made her uncomfortable.  
  
"What are you going to do today?" he finally asked when the silence between them had grown uncomfortable as well.  
  
She shrugged.  
  
"Don't do that," he said. "I know you know. You're not someone that just wanders the world aimlessly. You always have a plan."  
  
She didn't look at him. She was staring at the green and white striped curtains of the second window by the door.  
  
"Are you going to tell me?"  
  
 _No_. "I've been killing angels," she heard herself say. Not at all what she'd been planning on saying. Why did he seem to make her speak her mind when she was intending to do the opposite? "I've been hunting them down and killing them. I have a list." She didn't bother pulling it out of her pocket. He didn't need to see the depth of her obsession.  
  
There was a brief moment of silence and Claire chanced a glance at Jesse.  
  
He was still staring at her. She couldn't read his expression.  
  
Finally, he asked, "Can I come with you?"  
  
She turned back to him. "To do what?"  
  
"Kill angels," he said, pushing back the blankets, beginning to get dressed as well. "I've never seen an angel die. I think I met an angel once when I was a child. Once. I'd like to meet another one. The one I met wasn't that horrible. Maybe the ones you kill are."  
  
Claire's eyes narrowed. "They are." Her voice was matter-of-fact and decisive, leaving no room for argument.  
  
He only nodded in reply, like he didn't really believe her.  
  
Her hands clenched into fists. "You can't tell Krissy," she said.  
  
This made him look up. He'd pulled on his boxers and was now reaching for his pants, but he stopped mid-reach when Claire spoke. His eyes were wide as though he were shocked or had been caught in the act of doing something reprehensible. Claire's eyes only narrowed further. She dug her nails into her palms to keep herself from smirking.  
  
"I don't want her knowing where you are or where I am," she said. She didn't explain why. She didn't feel like she needed to. But she also didn't really feel like she owed Jesse an explanation either. "If you want to come see me kill angels, you can't call Krissy."  
  
Jesse straightened slowly as though moving too quickly was too much while he was thinking about his answer. He pulled on his pants and snatched his shirt off the carpet of the motel room. He turned away from her and pulled it on over his head. He still didn't answer her. Finally, he turned around. She was still glaring at him with her arms crossed over her chest, her hands clenched into fists. She looked dangerous like that. She knew she did. And she still couldn't tell what his expression meant.  
  
Finally, he nodded at her and said, "Okay."  
  
She relaxed slightly. "Okay," she said back and grabbed her backpack off the table in the kitchenette before walking out of the motel room.  
  
She didn't wait for him or hold the door. She knew he'd follow.


	9. Neuf [Jesse]

_Travelodge  
Palo Alto, California 2013_  
  
On road trip from Palo Alto to her next target that Jesse decided Claire Novak was the most infuriating girl he'd ever met. And it all started the minute they got into the car.  
  
"So where are we going?" Jesse asked as they backed out of the parking lot of the motel.  
  
No response.  
  
"Who are we hunting?"  
  
Still no answer.  
  
"Are you going to tell me anything about what's going on at all?"  
  
Claire kept her eyes glued to the road and drove leaning forward in her seat, almost hunched over the wheel, like she was afraid he was going to reach over and try and take it from her. The image was almost comical.  
  
Almost.  
  
Sighing, Jesse reached over and turned on the radio. Country music filled the car, but he only had a chance to wince at the station before it was shut off again. He looked up at Claire. She didn't look at him as she shut off the radio. He frowned and turned it on again. She shut it back off just as fast. He reached for the radio dial again.  
  
"I'm just going to turn it back off if you turn it on again," she warned.  
  
"So you do speak?" he replied with an edge to his voice.  
  
She clamped her lips together and kept her eyes on the road. He realized she hadn't looked at him once since they'd left the motel room.  
  
Jesse decided to swallow rather than let out the frustrated sigh he wanted to. He forced his eyes away from her and back onto the road in front of them. Palo Alto was slowly dissolving into a long stretch of freeway. He watched the large buildings and apartment complexes made for the students attending Stanford fall behind them. Houses, palm trees, and stretches of grass took their place. He watched as other buildings took the place of the ones he'd seen in Palo Alto, a few bits of nature and wildlife in between them. He wondered why so many people flocked to this section of the country and made it as crowded as it was.  
  
Finally, he tore his eyes away from the scenery and looked back at Claire. She looked exactly as she had when they'd first started out on their road trip. He checked the clock and was surprised to find almost an hour and a half had passed.  
  
"If you don't want me here, why did you let me come along to begin with?" he asked, his eyes darting from the digital clock set into the dashboard back up to her.  
  
Her grip on the steering wheel tightened by a fraction.  
  
"Claire?"  
  
"I never said I didn't want you here." She spoke quickly, the words all coming out in a rush like she thought they wouldn't really exist if she said them faster.  
  
"Then why are you ignoring me?" he asked.  
  
He resisted the urge to cross his arms over his chest and raise an eyebrow at her. He had a feeling that would lock her lips again. He wondered how Krissy had gotten her to talk. Well, he didn't wonder. He knew. She'd waited. She'd waited until Claire was comfortable and then let her speak herself. But Jesse didn't have the kind of time Krissy had back then. He had however long this car ride lasted, so he had to figure out a way to hurry her along.  
  
She sighed and didn't speak for so long that Jesse thought she wasn't going to speak at all. Then finally she said, "We're going to Sacramento to kill Ahriman."  
  
The name made him blink in surprise.  
  
"That's the Spirit of Destruction," he said, unable to keep the shock from his voice. A black and white drawing from a book on angels in theology popping into his mind: a gargoyle-like creature, half sheltered by a cave, with an arm raised, its face turned upwards. He highly doubted that was actually how the angel would look, but the picture, though it really wasn't very unsettling, had disturbed him. The idea that that was the angel they were going to kill set him on edge.  
  
"Yup," Claire replied, still not taking her eyes off the road.  
  
"Do you really think that's a good idea?" he asked before he could stop himself.  
  
Now she did turn to look at him. The look on her face was one of incredulity. Her eyes darted back to the road almost as quickly and she asked, "Why?"  
  
Jesse took a breath and licked his lips. Putting his feelings into words wasn't something he had ever been good at. Especially vague gut feelings like this. "I just do," he said, hating how he'd said it the minute he did. Claire was like him. Logical and practical. She wasn't going to trust a gut feeling that didn't have any reason behind it.  
  
"You just… _do_ ," she repeated, still staring at the road. "That's helpful. And descriptive."  
  
He sighed. "You know what I mean," he said, slumping in his seat and turning to look out the window once more.  
  
"No, actually, I don't," she said. "I don't know why you think not going to kill an angel that has possessed the body of some innocent person who probably has a family looking for them and wondering where they've gone is a good idea. Because I think it's a great idea. The less children in the world that end up like me the better."  
  
Jesse sighed again. "That's not what I mean either."  
  
"Then what  _did_  you mean?" Claire asked, her voice sounding angrier with every word she spoke. "Because that's how it sounded to me."  
  
"I meant that I don't think it's a good idea because I think something bad will happen," he said, his own voice getting an edge. "I think if you kill this angel, something bad will happen to you. Maybe you should let this one go."  
  
"No," she said without hesitation.  
  
Now Jesse did cross his arms over his chest. He kept his gaze glued on the trees the car zipped by. He didn't know how to reply without feeling like he was admitting defeat.  
  
It only took them another thirty minutes to get to Sacramento, but it felt like much longer. The silence in the car became filled with tension after their brief conversation and now Jesse didn't even feel like trying to break it. He was telling himself that he didn't know if Claire was refusing to let this one angel go because she was stubborn or because she truly believed that all angels were terrible and needed to die, but that wasn't true at all. He knew exactly why she wasn't letting this angel go and it was for the reason she'd already told him. It was just easier believing that she didn't have a good reason for wanting to eradicate the host of heaven.  
  
Once they arrived in the city, they drove around for another ten minutes, searching for a motel to stay at before Claire finally pulled into the parking lot of a place called America's Best Value Inn-Downtown. She didn't say a word to Jesse as she parked the car, grabbed her backpack from the trunk, and headed into the lobby to ask for a room. He slowly got out of the car and followed her, but by the time he reached the lobby, she already had a room key and was walking towards the room labeled 109.  
  
The motel room was similar to the one they'd just left and Claire dumped her backpack on the table in the kitchenette before heading back out again.  
  
"Where are you going?" Jesse, who had just sat down on the end of one of the two beds in the motel room, asked.  
  
"Motel food sucks," was the only reply he got.  
  
Letting out a breath of frustrated air, he got up and followed her.  
  
They elected to walk to a restaurant rather than take a car. It was California and there was no sign that the leaves were about to change color and that snow was soon going to be covering half of the northern part of the United States. Jesse wanted to enjoy the nice weather as much as Claire did. So they walked to a nearby IHOP and had pancakes. They barely spoke and everything seemed to painfully normal that Jesse found he was just waiting for the other shoe to drop. This felt too much like the calm before the storm to him.  
  
"Now what?" he asked as they pushed out of the restaurant's front doors.  
  
"Now we find him," Claire said simply. An angel blade appeared in her hand. He wondered how long she'd had it stored up her sleeve.  
  
He looked at her, an eyebrow raised, and asked, "How? You don't know where he is, what he looks like, or anything. How are you going to just… _find_ him and kill him tonight?"  
  
"I'm a vessel," she said as though that should explain everything.  
  
It didn't.  
  
"Okay," he said, his voice growing annoyed once more. "What does that have to do with anything?"  
  
"I can sense where angels are," she added. She didn't look at him. She was twirling her angel blade between her long fingers. The people they passed on the street stared. "I know where he's going to be. He's like a beacon that I'm drawn to. I'll find him. Maybe he won't be alone tonight, but eventually he will be and that's when I'll kill him."  
  
The way she said it, so matter-of-fact, startled him. She was going to kill this angel. That was a fact. It didn't matter to her that his vessel might have a family, that maybe the vessel could be brought back if the angel were somehow expelled. She was going to kill the angel. If one person died to keep other families from suffering what that family would suffer, what her family had suffered, then that was alright.  
  
Jesse swallowed hard.  
  
It was only now that he was beginning to realize just how dangerous Claire was.  
  
He didn't say anything the rest of the night. He didn't ask her what they were doing as they aimlessly wandered the streets, waiting for it to get dark. He didn't question her when she led them to a street where the lights didn't work near a cluster of apartment complexes. He didn't mention that it was getting late when midnight passed and no one seemed to be coming anywhere near where they were hiding. He knew Claire knew what she was doing and he was half afraid of what answers she might give to any of the dozens of questions currently circulating his mind.  
  
Finally, around two in the morning, he finally heard footsteps on the pavement at the end of the street. He didn't think that anyone, even an angel, would be this stupid. He didn't think they would go down a dark street this late at night. Not even if they were tired and trying to take a shortcut home. And, even if they were certain they were safe, wouldn't an angel be able to sense the presence of a vessel if a vessel could sense the presence of an angel?  
  
The answer to all of his assumptions appeared to be the same two words.  
  
Apparently not.  
  
A man appeared at the end of the street, illuminated by the one light that worked. His face wasn't visible from where they were sitting. Jesse felt Claire tense beside him as the man turned his face towards them. The angel blade was in her hand again and she had it in a white-knuckled grip.  
  
This was the angel they'd come here to kill.  
  
In a flash, Claire disappeared from Jesse's side. He blinked and looked up. The angel had started towards them. He couldn't see where Claire had gotten to in the dark, not even with how his eyes had adjusted to the darkness of the street, but he knew when she jumped out in front of the angel. The man stuttered in his walk. He was fighting with a smaller dark figure. A moment later, there was a flash of light so bright Jesse had to cover his eyes. When he looked up again, the figure was lying on the pavement.  
  
And Claire lay motionless beside him.  
  
Instantly, panic seized Jesse. He pushed himself up and bolted up the street to where she lay. He knelt beside her and turned her over. Her eyes were closed and he couldn't tell if she was breathing or not. It didn't look like it.  
  
"Claire!" he shook her roughly, hoping that might startle her into wakefulness.  
  
Nothing happened.  
  
"Claire!" he shook her again, so hard her hair tangled.  
  
Still nothing.  
  
"Claire, please!" he shook her once more.  
  
Finally, her eyelids fluttered open. She looked dazed, like she had no idea where she was or what just happened, but when she saw him, she seemed to remember. She pushed him off of her and groped around in the darkness for her angel blade. He watched her put something into the pocket of her jeans, but he couldn't see what it was.  
  
"Are you alright?" he asked when he'd finally found his voice.  
  
"I'm fine," Claire whispered, her voice hoarse.  
  
She slipped her angel blade back up her sleeve and pushed herself to her feet. She staggered a couple of steps and when she came to a stop she swayed. Then she began to cough, so hard it sounded like she was coughing up half her lung. She clearly wasn't fine.  
  
When she pulled her hand away from her mouth, Jesse was horrified to see it was smeared with something dark and sticky. He couldn't see the color of whatever was on her hand, but he didn't need to. He knew it was blood.  
  
"What's happening to you?" he whispered.  
  
Claire looked up at him. She looked suddenly very sick. Her eyes were sunken in, her face was drawn, her skin was a sickly pallor, and she looked like she'd lost some weight since he'd last seen her. He wondered how it had taken him this long to see it.  
  
"I keep the graces of the angels I kill," she said softly as she started back the way they'd come. "I turn them into rings." His gaze darted to the blue stone rings that covered her fingers. "But, it turns out, that having this many graces this close to a vessel isn't a good idea. This is what happens. I didn't realize that's why I was coughing up blood until a few days after it first started happening."  
  
Jesse recognized her tone. It was the same one she'd used when talking about killing the angels. She knew she was sick. She knew that she was probably dying. And yet, she didn't care. She was killing angels and keeping the remains of their grace, so they couldn't go back to heaven, so they couldn't hurt another family like they'd hurt hers. In her eyes, she was going to die a noble death. And Jesse knew that no matter what he said, no matter how he begged and pleaded, she wouldn't be stopped. He couldn't stop her from heading down a path she already believed was inevitable.


	10. Dix [Krissy]

_Apple Blossom Inn  
Ahwahnee, California 2013_  
  
The drive from Illinois to California seemed to take far less time than the drive from Louisiana to Illinois had, though they were about the same distance apart. Krissy would decide later that the reason was she'd been eager to get to Illinois to find out where Claire was and she wasn't eager to get to California because she knew once she found her something bad was going to happen or was going to have already happened and she wanted to put that off for as long as possible. And time always seemed to go by much more quickly when you were dreading something than when you were ready for something happen.  
  
Normally, Krissy would've found a hotel in the middle of the city, but she didn't know what was going to happen with Claire when she found her, so she looked up a list of the most rural cities and towns in California and settled on Ahwahnee. Partially because she liked the name and partially because it was in the middle of nowhere.  
  
And that was exactly what she wanted.  
  
Originally, she'd planned on making Ahwahnee her base and then driving in a spiral outwards trying to find Claire. However, the more she thought about that plan, the more she realized that wasn't going to work. Eventually, somehow, Claire would figure out that someone was looking for her. The best way to get Claire to come out of hiding, to  _find_  her, was to have her come to Krissy and she could only think of one way to do that.  
  
The Apple Blossom Inn was one of two motels in the town. The other was a bed and breakfast and, though Krissy liked the idea of staying there, it was too homey for her taste. She hadn't had a home in years. She didn't want to start now with a motel in a town she knew nothing about that wasn't even really a home to begin with. So she settled with the Inn and once she got comfortable in her small room, she pulled out her cell phone, spent a few minutes wandering around her room trying to get a signal, and then called Dean Winchester.  
  
To her surprise, he picked up on the first ring.  
  
"Krissy? Is everything okay?" he asked.  
  
She let out a breath and began pacing her motel room, running her shaking fingers through her hair, making her messy ponytail even messier. "Yeah," she said. "Yeah, everything's okay. I'm in California. I think Claire is here somewhere."  
  
"In California?"  
  
"Yeah." Krissy stopped pacing. She put her hand on her hip and stared out into the fading twilight. She watched a couple walk down the street holding hands and a woman jog past them with her dog.  
  
"California's a big state," Dean said. "How are you going to find her?"  
  
Krissy swallowed hard. She'd come up with an idea on her drive there, but now that she had to say it, she wasn't sure she wanted to. Not because she didn't like the idea (which she really didn't), but because she wasn't sure Dean would approve.  
  
"I need you to come here," she said, still staring out the window. "And I need you to bring Castiel with you."  
  
There was a brief silence on the other end of the line. "Why does Cas need to come with me?" Dean asked. He sounded tentative, suspicious.  
  
Krissy swallowed again. "Because I think that if the angel Claire was intended to be a vessel for is in the same state as her, she'll know and she'll try to find him. She-she really hates Castiel. She wants to kill him and…if he's in the same state as her, she'll put everything aside to find him. If we can use Castiel as bait, then when she comes to find him, maybe I can talk her into coming back home."  
  
This time the silence that followed her words was longer. Much longer. It was so long that she was starting to wonder if he was just going to hang up or already had when finally he said, "How do you know she won't actually kill him?"  
  
She bit her lip. She hadn't thought about that. Claire was good at what she did. That wasn't something Krissy knew for sure. Not really. She'd never  _seen_  Claire on a hunt, but somehow she just  _knew_. She couldn't explain how. She just did. Which made Dean's question a good one. It was a legitimate fear that Claire could kill Castiel before they had time to intercept her, but it was the only solution Krissy could come up with. And they had to find Claire soon. As always, she had the horrible notion that time was running out.  
  
"I don't," she finally said, going back to pacing the motel room. "But it's the only idea I have. I don't know how we'll find her otherwise."  
  
She heard Dean sigh on the other end of the line. She wasn't sure what it meant.  
  
"You really care about her, don't you." It wasn't a question.  
  
Krissy stopped pacing again and nodded before she remembered he couldn't' see her and said, "Yeah. Yeah, I do."  
  
He sighed again. "Alright. I'll bring Sam and Cas to California and we'll figure out what we're going to do once we get there."  
  
"Okay," she said and hung up after giving Dean the address of the motel she was currently staying in and he promised he would call her once they were in the area. The news should've made her feel happy, excited even, but she just felt even more nervous than she had before. It was like she was standing on the edge of a cliff she knew she had to jump off of and every time she tried to pull herself back, she only ended up closer than she was before.  
  
Deciding she wouldn't worry about it until tomorrow, she took a shower in the small bathroom and collapsed into bed, falling asleep the moment her head hit the pillow.  
  
She spent the next day wandering around the small town of Ahwahnee, trying to find a place she could lure Claire to that would seem like a likely place for an angel to be staying at and not seem suspicious at the same time, but everything seemed either too obvious or too obscure and therefore just as obvious.  
  
Returning to the motel late that night, she decided she would worry about it in the morning and was asleep before her head hit the pillow.  
  
Krissy woke up the next morning to her cell phone buzzing against the wood of nightstand it was sitting on. She opened her eyes blearily and squinted against the bright early morning sunlight that streamed through the thin sea foam colored curtains framing the single window of the motel room as she felt around on the nightstand for her phone. Once she had ahold of it, she checked to see who was calling and was surprised to see Dean's name on the screen. Yawning and wiping the sleep from her eyes, she tapped the 'talk' icon and said sleepily into the phone, "'Lo?"  
  
"Krissy, we're in the parking lot outside," Dean said.  
  
Pushing herself up from the bed, she padded to the window and stared out at the small gravel parking lot. Sure enough, near the entrance was a '69 Chevrolet Impala with three men standing next to it. Dean must've seen her because he waved when she looked out.  
  
"I'll be out in just a second," she said before tapping the 'end call' icon and turning away from the window to get dressed.  
  
The morning air had a slight bite to it that Krissy noticed the moment she left the motel room. Ahwahnee was in the center of California and still wasn't ever touched by true winter, but she had been in warm weather for so long that she could recognize this was the beginning of fall for the rest of the country. Summer was just about over.  
  
"Hi," Krissy said when she'd reached the edge of the parking lot where Dean was parked. "Um…maybe we should go inside. We can…plan better in there."  
  
She was turning away, about to head back into her motel room when Castiel spoke.  
  
"Is it true this girl we're trying to find is the daughter of Jimmy Novak?"  
  
Krissy had only ever met Sam and Dean. She'd heard of Castiel through them and through Claire, but she'd never actually met him or seen him. Now that he was standing in front of her, wearing the body of Claire's father, she wasn't sure what to feel. She felt anger for what he'd done to Claire, how he'd ruined her life when he hadn't needed to, but she also felt that maybe he was a different angel now than he had been when he'd first taken the body of Jimmy Novak. There had to be a reason that Sam and Dean liked him so much.  
  
All of this ran through her head in the moment it took her to turn her head to look over her shoulder at him. She didn't really look at any part of him except his face. He looked…distraught was the only word she could come up with to describe his expression. And at the same time something else occurred to her.  
  
He really wanted to help the girl who's life he'd ruined.  
  
She swallowed hard. "Yeah," she said. "She is."  
  
Then she headed back into the motel, Dean, Sam, and Castiel following behind her.


	11. Onze [Claire]

_America's Best Value Inn-Downtown  
Sacramento, California 2013_  
  
Claire awoke with a jolt. She opened her eyes wide in the darkness of the motel room. It wasn't true darkness anymore. The sky outside the window was turning blue, the first indication that a new day was about to begin. She could feel Jesse's arms around her, his bare chest pressed up against her back, his soft breathing in her ear as he slept. He didn't seem to have noticed she'd woken up this time.  
  
Slowly, she sat upright, staring out the window at the few stars she could see even with the glare from the city nearby. She pushed herself up from the bed and walked to the window, her eyes still glued, unblinking, to the navy blue sky. When she reached the window, she felt the urge to put her hand on the glass, to feel the coolness beneath the tips of her fingers, but she didn't. She just continued staring at the sky and _knowing_.  
  
The angel she was meant to be the vessel for was nearby.  
  
It had been nearly six years since she'd last been this close to the angel Castiel. She could hardly remember how she'd felt the last time she'd seen him, been close to him, but she couldn't help but wonder if it'd felt anything like this.  
  
If she'd felt the same strong pull, if she'd felt empty, if she'd believed, despite everything he'd done, that she couldn't be whole unless her essences was filled with his grace.  
  
She  _did_  remember he'd possessed her, even if it was only for a moment. And she did remember how… _lost_  she'd felt after his grace had left her body and flowed back into her father. She hated Castiel. She wanted him dead. She did. But she also knew that she'd never felt more alive than the precious few minutes that his grace had been a part of her.  
  
It was then she realized – or maybe she'd always known it – that her father had never been Castiel's true vessel. He was only chosen because he was more convenient, more accessible, and able to do more than she would've at the time. Even now, he wouldn't be able to do much if he chose to possess her instead. She was still only eighteen and she hardly looked it. Castiel was like her. Impatient. So he'd chosen the vessel that wasn't made for him, but was the next best thing: her father.  
  
A part of her felt immeasurably sad, angry, and jealous that her father had been chosen over her, that he got to have his essence mixed with the grace of the angel that should've been hers. Why couldn't Castiel have waited just a few more years? Surely to a being as timeless as an angel, ten years felt like far less.  
  
A car drove by the motel, its headlights swooping around the room and right across Claire's eyes, making her finally tear her eyes away from the lightening sky and blink several times. She shook her head for good measure.  
  
What was she thinking?  
  
Was she really jealous of her father's fate? What was she  _thinking_?  
  
Castiel had possessed her father instead of her because he was impatient and greedy and didn't care that he was separating a wife from her husband, a daughter from her father, just so he could do what he claimed was the will of God on Earth. He'd ruined her life and never once apologized or felt bad about it at all. He'd even possessed her when his vessel had been damaged because he would choose to violate a young girl over a dying man.  
  
Her father was dead. Castiel had been a part of him for too long.  
  
Claire swallowed hard and wrapped her thin arms around her equally thin body. Somehow she knew that had he possessed her instead of her father, it would be different. She was Castiel's  _true_  vessel and if an angel possessed the vessel they were truly meant for the vessel had  _some_  agency. Not much. The angel was still in control, of course, but she wouldn't be gone from her own mind. She would still be there.  
  
She and Castiel would be working together. She wouldn't be fighting a battle that she had no hope of winning like her father had.  
  
The sky was turning purple now. She could see the first traces of sunlight on the horizon and on the roofs of the buildings surrounding the motel. She blinked and looked down at the window sill, watching a small bug scuttle along the edge before taking flight and disappearing into the darkness.  
  
"Claire?"  
  
The voice startled her. She jumped, half turning towards the bed at the same time.  
  
Jesse had propped himself up on one arm and was squinting at her. She hadn't woken him up this time. He was only waking up just now. Maybe it was only just now that he'd noticed she wasn't lying next to him anymore and the chill of her absence had finally hit him.  
  
"What are you doing?" he asked, his voice scratchy with sleep.  
  
She thought about forcing a smile, telling him a lie, and crawling back into bed beside him, giving him the illusion that everything was fine. She imagined pretending to go back to sleep in his arms as he truly fell back into his dreams again before she pushed herself up and out of his arms and left without him knowing, but she felt she owed him more than that. She might've done that when he'd first found her, but he didn't deserve that anymore.  
  
So instead, she turned away from the window and walked slowly back to the bed, sitting on the edge of the mattress, her arms still wrapped around herself. She stared at her knees in the purple morning light.  
  
"What is it?" Jesse's voice was soft, but more awake. She turned to look at him. She hadn't heard him shift, but he was sitting up in the bed now. She half expected the look on his face to be one of concern, but she should've known better. He wasn't going to underestimate her. He may have met her as the frightened, timid girl that didn't speak, but he knew she'd become much more than that.  
  
Claire wondered what Krissy would think of her if she were here now.  
  
"Castiel is here," she said without preamble.  
  
"What?" Jesse sounded confused.  
  
She stared out the window. The sky was indigo now. "Castiel is here. In California. I can…I can  _feel_ him." She looked at Jesse again. "Because I'm his vessel."  
  
She watched him swallow. She could see in his eyes that he already knew what she was going to say, but he asked anyway, "What does that mean?"  
  
"I have to go find him," she said, looking away again. "He's the angel that killed my father and ruined my life. I don't know how long he's going to be here, but I do know that as long as he's within the same state as me, I'll be able to find him. I just have to go where the…" She trailed off, unsure of how to explain to Jesse the pull she felt towards Castiel. She took a deep breath. "I just have to go."  
  
"Alone."  
  
"What?" She turned to look at him again.  
  
He wasn't looking at her anymore. He was staring up at the ceiling, his legs bent, his elbows resting on his knees. "Alone," he said again. "You have to go alone."  
  
"I didn't –" she began.  
  
"You didn't have to," he said, cutting her off. He was shaking his head. He looked at her. "I know that you have to go do this alone." He let out a humorless laugh and something seemed to come undone in her chest as he did. "I don't know what I thought was going to happen if I stayed with you. I guess maybe I hoped I could convince you to come back to the cabin in the woods in North Carolina and everything would go back to the way it was. I didn't like it, but you…" He trailed off. He didn't say anything else and instead, looked away again, biting his lip.  
  
She would wonder for the rest of her life how he'd wanted to finish that sentence.  
  
"When do you want to leave?" he asked, pulling Claire out of her thoughts.  
  
"As soon as possible," she said without hesitation.  
  
Jesse began to move, getting out of the bed and pulling on the shirt he tossed onto the floor the night before. Claire watched him, her confusion growing with every minute until he said, "You want to leave now, don't you?"  
  
She opened her mouth. She almost said, "Not really," but she stopped herself at the last second, saying, "Yes," instead.  
  
The night melted away around them as they cleaned up the motel room, shoving their things into their respective bags. By the time the sun was in the sky, the room looked exactly as it had the day they'd arrived.  
  
The entire time, Claire kept thinking about what Jesse had said, how he'd wanted what Krissy had wanted: for her to come home, come back to the cabin in the woods, for everything to be exactly as it was. She wondered vaguely if either one of them really knew that the comfort of the cabin had always been only temporary. It never ever could've lasted, no matter how much they wanted it to. She always would leave and everyone else would always be left behind, wondering why she'd gone.  
  
As she pulled on some clothes that hadn't been washed for days in the bathroom, she bit her lip, refusing to look at herself in the small circular mirror hanging over the sink. Maybe thinking that way wasn't fair or nice or anything, but it was the truth and if she wasn't nice or fair, at least she was honest, right?  
  
When she exited the bathroom, Jesse was standing where she had been earlier: at the window, his arms crossed over his chest. Only he was fully dressed. Still, the similarity in appearance between the two of them was uncanny to her and she hesitated in the doorway to the bathroom, wondering if maybe it would be alright if she took him with her when she went to go find Castiel.  
  
 _No,_  a voice told her.  _You're not going to take someone who won't understand how important this is to you with you._  
  
 _But maybe he does,_  a smaller, weaker voice whispered.  
  
She shook herself and ignored it. She was going alone. She'd decided that a long time ago. She wasn't going to change her plans just because a boy that understood her better than just about anyone showed up when she hadn't wanted him to in the first place.  
  
She took a step out of the bathroom and into the main room of the motel. She opened her mouth to speak, to say they should get going, but what came out instead was a violent cough. She pressed her hand hard against her mouth, not wanting Jesse to see whatever it was she was certain she was coughing up. When she finished, she straightened and looked at him, he was staring at her and had started towards her, but she quickly wiped her hand on the leg of her jeans without looking at it and said, "I'm fine. We should go."  
  
He didn't say anything in reply. He only nodded. But she could tell from the look in his eyes that he didn't believe her.  
  
They checked out of the hotel in what felt like record time before they stood awkwardly in the parking lot, each with their bags slung over their shoulders, trying to find the words to say goodbye.  
  
"I guess this is goodbye," Jesse said. He sounded so much like one of those lovesick teenage boys from a teen romance novel that Claire almost rolled her eyes.  
  
Almost. But not quite.  
  
She was going to miss him too much to care.  
  
"Yeah," she said instead, adjusting her backpack on her shoulder. "I guess it is."  
  
"Well, I hope you find what you're looking for," was all Jesse said before he turned on his heel and began to walk down the street.  
  
For a while, Claire watched him. She'd been half expecting him to close the distance between them and kiss her and say goodbye that way, but he didn't and she felt she should've known he wouldn't. He was like her. Grand gestures weren't his thing. And he knew that she would know what he meant however little he spoke.  
  
She stayed in the parking lot, watching where Jesse had disappeared off to until the sun started to heat the street and the cars around her. She stayed there until a small bird flew down from one of the trees that were planted into the sidewalk every few feet and began to pick at the ground, trying to find something to eat before looking at her once and flying back up into the tree it had just left.  
  
She watched it go. She watched the trees sway in the wind.  
  
She closed her eyes, feeling the wind blowing through her hair.  
  
Yes, it was time to go


	12. Douz [Krissy]

_Apple Blossom Inn  
Ahwahnee, California 2013_  
  
Never once had Krissy planned this in depth for anything. Not on any hunt had she come up with this meticulous of a plan and never had she been so worried that one thing wouldn't fall into place and everything would go wrong. She had the help of Sam, Dean, and Castiel, all expert hunters and used to setting up traps like this where no one would get hurt, but she was still worried enough that she was up pacing at night rather than sleeping and could often be found sitting at the table in the kitchenette of their motel room at night rather than in bed.  
  
"Krissy, staying up and worrying about it isn't going to help anything," Sam had finally told her one night when he'd caught her up again. "The best thing you can do for yourself and for Claire right now is sleep. The more rest you get, the more prepared you'll be for when Claire finally shows up."  
  
"But we don't even know when that's going to be," Krissy had said, running a shaking hand through her hair. The other was tapping a pencil on the table with a quick tempo. "She might not even know that Castiel is in California and she might not be headed for us at all and even if she does know he's here and she is headed for us, does the connection work both ways? Does Castiel know when she's nearby too?"  
  
"Yes," the voice of the angel came from across the room. Her eyes darted to him. He was as human as any of them now after his grace had been stolen and the angels had fallen and needed just as much sleep as the rest of them, but Krissy had a feeling that he got about as much sleep as she did. "Claire is the vessel I was truly meant for, but as I was impatient for her to grow up and Dean was put in Hell without warning, I took the vessel of her father rather than her. Because she is the vessel I was originally intended for, I have a much stronger connection to her than I do to any other human."  
  
He paused to let this sink in before continuing.  
  
"She is coming for us. She should've gotten here very shortly after my arrival, but she is taking her time getting here. I think she is afraid to face me because I wear the skin of her father. She doesn't know if she can destroy that even after all I have done."  
  
Castiel swallowed and there was something in his eyes that looked like regret and remorse. Krissy was still unsure on her feelings for him, but at that moment, she almost felt sorry for him and wished for a second that there was another way to bring Claire home.  
  
Finally, the day came where they were all sitting around the table in the kitchenette, talking about some of the details of their plan – details they'd already talked about a thousand times before, but felt the need to reiterate just in case – when Castiel suddenly sat up straighter and said, "She's here. She's in the city."  
  
The town they were in could hardly be classified as a city, but no one bothered to correct the angel. They all immediately stopped speaking and looked at him.  
  
Krissy swallowed before asking, "Where?"  
  
Castiel didn't look at her. "She's wandering the area. She's trying to find me."  
  
"She can't know all of us are here," Krissy said immediately. "Castiel, you have go out of the motel and…walk around or something so she can see you."  
  
"What if she tries to jump him?" Dean asked.  
  
But Krissy was already shaking her head before he'd even finished his sentence. "She won't. She'll try to get him alone and then do it. She's not stupid. Everything will go exactly as we want it to. She just can't see us. If she does, she'll know that something is going on and try to kill Castiel without us being there."  
  
Dean was opening his mouth to protest some more, but Castiel was already standing and heading towards the door. Before Dean could stop him, he opened the door, and stepped out of the motel room. Sam, Dean, and Krissy all crowded around the window, peering through the curtains as subtly as they could to see if they could see Claire, but after fifteen minutes when she still hadn't shown herself, Castiel came back inside and everyone went back to what they were doing before.  
  
"Did she see you?" Krissy asked, not looking up from the book she was pretending to read as soon as Castiel opened the door to the motel room again.  
  
"I think so," he replied. "I didn't see her, but I felt her."  
  
That answer was good enough for all of them.  
  
The place they'd decided to confront Claire – a warehouse full of wooden shipping boxes on the outskirts of the town – was inconspicuous enough that no one in the town would notice anything out of the ordinary, but Krissy couldn't help thinking that it was a pretty obvious place for a trap and that if Claire really thought about it, she would know exactly what she was walking into.  
  
"She won't," Castiel said when Krissy voiced her fears as they were packing everything they thought they might need into a duffle bag Dean had pulled out of the back of the Impala that evening.  
  
"How do you know?" Krissy asked.  
  
"She's too determined to destroy me," he replied evenly. "Even if she does know this is a trap, she won't care. She's been eager to kill me ever since I took her father away from her. She hasn't gotten this close to me in the six years since. She's not going to give up her one chance to kill me on the grounds that it could potentially be a trap."  
  
Krissy pressed her lips into a thin line. As much as she didn't want to admit it with everything Castiel's words implied, she knew he was right. No matter what Claire thought was going to happen, when she showed up at the warehouse tonight, she would go in and try to kill him. She turned to the angel and opened her mouth to say something, but there was a strange look on his face. Like he knew more than he was letting on.  
  
"What is it?" she asked.  
  
Castiel shook his head, but didn't look at Krissy. "It's nothing."  
  
She thought about prying, but decided if the angel wasn't going to tell her, it wasn't important anyway. She went back to doodling a rain cloud on the corner of the blueprint of the warehouse Sam had printed out at the local library.  
  
Night seemed to come far too quickly. By the time they all piled into the Impala and drove to the warehouse, parking a block away so Claire might not see the car, Krissy still felt unprepared. They'd spent the last three days working out all the kinks in the plan and trying to figure out how they were going to do this, but she still felt like there was something she was missing, something she wasn't counting on or prepared for. A part of her knew that this was just paranoia and general anxiety, but another part of her couldn't help wondering if maybe there was a good reason for her fears.  
  
It was around seven in the evening when they got to the warehouse. Sam and Dean stationed themselves at the back. Castiel placed himself in the middle. Krissy crouched behind a stack of wooden crates nearby. Sam and Dean had weapons on them, she knew, but the ones they had in their hands were tasers and other weapons that were meant to stun whomever they were used on rather than kill. Krissy, on the other hand, had nothing. And so did Castiel.  
  
Normally, Krissy might've felt naked without a weapon on her of some sort. In fact, Dean and Sam had suggested she carry something just in case something unexpected happened, but she'd refused. She wasn't going to hurt Claire and if she went into this with a weapon, Claire wouldn't trust her anyway. She had to come in without anything on her. If she got hurt in the process, that was fine. She just had to try to get Claire to agree to come home.  
  
The first hour they sat in the warehouse was no surprise to anyone. They didn't expect Claire to materialize out of the woodwork before it was completely dark out. The light was fading fast if only because it was closer to winter now than summer and, though they were in southern California and it was exempt from the chill the rest of the country seemed to get, it wasn't exempt from the earlier darkness.  
  
Krissy stayed in her corner of the warehouse, keeping Castiel in her line of vision. She pulled out the zippo lighter she'd found at a thrift store shortly after her father had died and began playing with it. Opening it, lighting the wick, closing it. Repeat. Over and over again. Soon two hours had passed. Then three. Then almost four.  
  
"Whose idea was it to come this early again?" Krissy asked when she checked her watch and it was fifteen minutes to midnight.  
  
"Yours," Dean replied.  
  
She pressed her lips together. Yes. It _had_  been her idea. Due to her excessive worrying, but she was glad she worried so much. Maybe  _because_  of her worrying, she could get Claire home safe and sound. It was odd to her that that now seemed like some astronomical feat. What had happened in the past few weeks to make that such a challenge? She tried to shake the thought from her mind, but was unable to. She'd been feeling that Claire was in danger for weeks. She just never knew what from and she still didn't know now, but soon it wouldn't matter. She'd have Claire back with her and she could bring her home and everything would be as it should and she wouldn't have to worry anymore.  
  
She was opening her mouth to say something else, to suggest maybe they go back to the motel room when something changed in the warehouse. The silence seemed suddenly tense. Krissy sat up straighter. She looked around the edge of the wooden crates she was leaning up against and saw that Castiel felt it too. He was looking around the warehouse, trying to see something that he couldn't.  
  
They all knew what that something was.  
  
 _Claire._  
  
For a few moments longer, the warehouse remained empty and full of tension. The only person visible was Castiel, standing in the middle of the warehouse, searching with his eyes for the girl they'd come to find. The moon shone through one of the high windows directly on him like a natural spotlight. It was almost too perfect.  
  
And then it shattered.  
  
A pale form with what looked like shimmering starlight following it, fell from the rafters of the warehouse directly in front of Castiel. The angel was clearly shocked, but had the good sense to stumble backwards when Claire lashed out with an angel blade. The look on her face was one of pure hate.  
  
It took her a few moments to remember what she was supposed to do, but when she saw that Claire was backing Castiel up into a corner, she darted out from her hiding place and quickly – and probably foolishly – placed herself between Claire and Castiel, holding her hands up in a gesture of surrender.  
  
For a split second, it looked like Claire was going to stab her to get to Castiel. Or maybe she just didn't see her through the haze of red fury that had clouded her vision, but then she seemed to come back to herself. Her eyes widened and the angel blade stopped an inch away from Krissy's chest.  
  
It was probably minutes, but to Krissy it felt like hours that they stood there with their chests heaving, staring at each other. Really, it hadn't been that long since they'd last seen each other. It'd only been a few weeks, but to Krissy it felt like a lifetime.  
  
Finally, she swallowed and said in a soft voice, "Claire."  
  
Claire seemed to come back to herself. Her eyes narrowed, her grip on the angel blade tightened and she pointed it more forcefully at the center of Krissy's chest. Her hands were shaking. "Get out of my way," she said through gritted teeth.  
  
Krissy shook her head. "No," she said.  
  
"You know what he's done!" Claire shouted. "He's ruined my life! He deserves to die!"  
  
Krissy shook her head again. "No," she said a second time. "He doesn't deserve to die. He hurt you, yes, but he doesn't deserve to die. If you kill him, then you'll be just as bad as he is. Do you really want that? To stoop to his level?"  
  
"Yes!" Claire half-screamed. "Yes, I do! I don't fucking _care_  if I stoop to his level! He already killed my father!"  
  
Krissy took a shaky breath. This wasn't going how she'd thought it would, hoped it would. She lowered her hands. "Claire…please…" she said softly. "I know you feel like you have to do this –"  
  
"I _do_  have to do this!"  
  
"– but you don't. You can let this go and you can come home and everything will be okay and you can forget that this world exists and you can be happy –"  
  
"No!" Claire spoke so shrilly that Krissy stopped speaking. "I  _can't_  be happy! I can't  _ever_  be happy! I am  _never_ going to be happy! This is the only way I can be at peace!"  
  
And that was when Krissy understood and she was so completely shocked by what Claire was saying, though she truly felt she should've known it all along, that other girl was able to push her aside and rush Castiel once more. She was certain that Claire was going to kill him, but at the last second, Dean stepped in, grabbing Claire's wrist in his hand, his fingers wrapping all the way around her little bird bones.  
  
"Drop the blade," Dean said in a dangerous voice as Claire strained against him, still trying to get at Castiel who had an odd look on his face.  
  
"No!" Claire shrieked. Krissy could tell from the way she was moving, she was going to break her own wrist if she wasn't careful.  
  
"I don't want to hurt you, but if you don't stop I will," Dean said, his voice was calm and quiet, but still just dangerous as before. Sam stood just barely in Krissy's line of vision, swallowing nervously, not knowing whether to go help his brother or stay where he was.  
  
"Dean, let her go."  
  
The voice was quiet and could barely be heard above Claire's screams and shrieks of frustration, but it quieted the warehouse instantly. Everyone, even Claire, fell silent.  
  
Castiel had put his hand on Dean's shoulder. Dean turned to look at him, his own expression one of confusion mixed with horror. He looked so incredibly sad that Krissy's eyes filled with tears and she knew what he was going to say before he said it.  
  
"Let her do it."  
  
"Cas…" Krissy couldn't see his face from her place on the floor of the warehouse, but Dean sounded heartbroken as he spoke.  
  
"She's dying," Castiel said. The words sent a wave of shock through everyone in the warehouse. "She's extremely sick. She doesn't have much longer. She deserves to be at peace when she dies. This is the only way she will achieve that. I'm the one who stole her peace from her. If this is what gives her peace, then she deserves to have it."  
  
For a moment, it looked like Dean wasn't going to listen, like he was going to knock Claire out anyway and drive as far away from this place as he could with Castiel and Sam in the backseat, yelling at them the whole way, asking what the fuck they were thinking for even suggesting this happen. Krissy wanted to let them, too. If Claire didn't kill Castiel, then maybe she would stay alive longer. Maybe her stubborn spirit would keep her bright fire burning for a little bit longer. And Krissy knew it was selfish to wish that, but they'd had such a short time together. Didn't they deserve longer?  
  
But then Dean's grip on Claire slackened. Castiel stepped back and in the brief moment of Dean's weakness, Claire wrenched herself out of his grasp and threw herself at the angel. She plunged the angel blade into his heart.  
  
A bright light filled the warehouse, everyone closing their eyes as it did. When it faded, Claire let out a bloodcurdling scream and collapsed to the floor of the warehouse. Castiel lay beside her, his eyes closed, the black silhouette of his wings covering the floor and wooden crates where he's fallen.  
  
Once the shock of what had happened faded, Krissy crawled over to Claire. She was unconscious, sickly pale, and covered in a thin sheen of sweat.  
  
"Claire," she whispered, brushing the other girl's hair out of her eyes. When she didn't respond, she said her name again, a little louder this time, "Claire!"  
  
Claire's eyelids snapped open and she let out a gasp before she began coughing hard. At first nothing happened, and then a few flecks of blood sprayed her lips. Then more. She was pushing herself up on shaking arms, one hand covering her mouth, but blood leaked through the cracks in her fingers and droplets fell to the cement flooring of the warehouse, panting it a dark crimson.  
  
When she finally finished coughing, she collapsed back to the floor on her stomach breathing heavily. She was heaving through corrupted lungs. Krissy could hear it in the way she was wheezing with every breath she took. She lifted her up, laying her on her side, so she'd be able to breathe easier. She lifted her head into her lap.  
  
"You're okay, you're okay," she said, her shaking fingers running through her limp, pale hair. Tears had filled her eyes again and they fell onto Claire's starlight hair, sparkling in the light from the moon outside the window.  
  
Claire was trembling violently. One of her bloodstained fingers reached up and she clasped Krissy's fingers in her own. Her grip was shockingly tight for how weak she seemed.  
  
"I didn't leave you because I don't love you," she whispered, her voice shaking almost as much as she was. "I was lost. I was lost and…and you found me. You found me. You saved me. But it-it never could've lasted." She looked up at Krissy. "You know that, right?"  
  
As Claire said the words, Krissy knew they were true and she nodded. Claire would always leave, no matter what happened. She would always leave. As long as Castiel was alive, she would always leave.  
  
"Castiel is dead now," Claire whispered, still looking into Krissy's eyes. "And I'm done running. It-it's time for me to let go, okay?"  
  
Krissy shook her head this time. "No," she said in a choked voice. "No. You can't."  
  
"It's been too long," Claire said. "This is the only way."  
  
Krissy heard the words she didn't say: For me to truly be at peace.  
  
"I promised your mother I would save you," she said, trying to hold back the sobs rising in her chest. "I promised her I'd bring you home."  
  
Claire smiled then, so softly and sadly that Krissy's heart broke.  
  
"You already have."  
  
And then she saw it, the light fading from Claire's eyes, the smile freezing itself in place and Claire's soul drifting out of her body, out of the warehouse and up to heaven.  
  
Krissy looked up. She stared at the moon shining out of the windows set high up near the ceiling of the warehouse and she could almost swear the stars seemed to twinkle and sparkle more brightly in the black sky.  
  
Maybe it was just her imagination or wishful thinking, but it looked like they were welcoming another soul home.


	13. Trieze [Krissy]

_Apple Blossom Inn  
Ahwahnee, California 2013_  
  
It took them a couple of days to accept that not only had they lost Claire, they'd lost Castiel as well. That wasn't what they'd planned. That wasn't what was supposed to happen.  
  
Dean and Sam moved into a motel room of their own. Sam said it was because they were a bit crowded in Krissy's, but she was pretty sure it was because Dean needed the space. She'd never  _seen_  him cry, but the night Castiel and Claire had died, after she'd carried Claire's body to the car and laid her down in the backseat with her hands resting on her stomach, making it look like she was only sleeping, she'd seen his body shaking from behind when she'd come back into the warehouse. Sam had told her to wait outside, to give them a minute and she had. That was when the truth of what she'd lost hit her and she began to cry as well.  
  
Once she'd collected herself and Dean had done the same, they all piled into the car with the two bodies of their friends, and drove back to the motel.  
  
Dean and Sam said they were going to burn Castiel's body as was the hunter custom, but Krissy talked them into keeping it to give back to Amelia Novak who was soon going to be learning she'd lost not only her husband but her daughter as well. Dean didn't want to, but Sam said it was the right thing to do.  
  
"Cas has only _ever_  done the right thing!" he shouted at his brother. "He deserves to have a hunter's funeral! He doesn't deserve to be put into the ground because his wife thinks God is watching over her ruined family."  
  
To an extent, Krissy agreed with him. She thought Claire deserved hunter's funeral too, but after her meeting with Mrs. Novak, she couldn't make herself betray what Amelia's wishes would be. She'd lost everything for no reason. She deserved better than this and the very least they could do for her was give her back the bodies of the people she'd lost.  
  
To Krissy's complete and utter shock, Jesse Turner was standing near the door to the motel when Krissy returned, struggling under the weight of Claire's body in her arms. He was leaning up against the door, a duffle bag slung over his shoulder. When he saw Krissy and Claire, he rushed forward, taking Claire out of Krissy's arms. She wanted to shout at him to not touch her, that he'd never cared about her the same way she had, but then she saw the look of devastation on his face and felt the gentle way he relieved her of her weight, and she chose to say nothing instead.  
  
She had a feeling she would never get the full story of what had happened between Claire Novak and Jesse Turner, but she also had a feeling that, in this case, that was okay.  
  
Jesse laid Claire down on one of the two beds in the motel room. He placed her hands on her chest like Krissy had in the car and then stepped back and for a long time said nothing. Finally, he spoke, his voice barely more than a whisper, "Why didn't you try to stop her?"  
  
"What?" Krissy asked, not really believing what she was hearing.  
  
He whirled around, his face a mask of fury. "Why didn't you try to stop her? From killing Castiel? She was  _sick_ , Krissy! Really sick! Why didn't you stop her?"  
  
"I  _did_  try!" Krissy shouted back, balling her hands into fists.  
  
"You didn't try hard enough!" He replied. "If you had, she'd be alive right now!"  
  
"She wouldn't listen to me!" Krissy shrieked, throwing a hand out towards the bed where Claire lay. "I tried to tell her that she had to come home and that everything would be better if she did, but do you know what she said to me? She said she wouldn't ever be happy! She said she wouldn't ever be at peace! And that this was the only way she could achieve it!"  
  
"How can you say you  _ever_  loved her after she just  _died_?" he said far more calmly than he seemed to feel. His voice cracked halfway through his sentence.  
  
"Because she  _wanted_  to die, Jesse," Krissy said, her own voice calm now. "She wanted to die and when someone wants to die, you can try to stop them all you want, but in the end, they're still going to find a way to destroy themselves no matter what you do. Dean tried to stop her. I tried to stop her. In the end, Castiel knew what Dean and I were both ignoring: she would die later even if she wasn't going to die now and, since that was the case, she might as well die feeling as though she were at peace rather than later and still full of rage and hate."  
  
Jesse didn't say anything in reply. He turned back to Claire, lying still, silent, and pale. Her lips had started to lose their color now too. Krissy wondered if she started to go cold. Without warning, Jesse fell to his knees and began to sob, his face pressed into the comforter of the bed, muffling the sound. Krissy thought about kneeling next to him and comforting him, but she was pretty sure that was the opposite of what he wanted her to do. She turned around and left the room.  
  
The next day was one of the hardest of Krissy's life.  
  
No one had gotten much sleep the night before and when they all woke up, there was a moment where they forgot what had happened, where they couldn't remember how they'd come to be where they were and why there was an ache in their chests. And then they did remember and everything got a little darker.  
  
Everyone knew they had to be leaving. They had to go up to Illinois to give the bodies of Claire and Jimmy Novak to Amelia Novak, but no one seemed to be able to move. Krissy stayed in her motel room, staring at Claire's still body for hours. Jesse went out at one point and got them lunch, but neither of them ate it. They let it sit in its bag on the counter for hours without touching it before one of them finally got up and threw it away. Dean and Sam were much the same only they both were drinking more alcohol than they could ever remember having drank together in years.  
  
When night finally came, everyone seemed to come to some sort of mutual agreement that it was time to leave the rooms. They all staggered out of their doors and into the parking lot and, though Krissy and Jesse were underage, neither Sam nor Dean bothered to tell them so when they started reaching for the bottle of Jack Daniel's too.  
  
It was sometime around three in the morning that the accusations started.  
  
Dean went first. He'd had more to drink than anyone sitting out under the tree in the parking lot of the motel, so it made sense that he would be the first to say something he regretted. He turned to Krissy and said, "Why did you come up with this stupid fucking idea?"  
  
"Dean," Sam said sharply, immediately taking the drink from his hand. He was drunk too, but not as drunk as his brother.  
  
"You wanted to set Cas up as bait. Why'd you do that? Why didn't you think that maybe that was a stupid fucking idea?" he asked, his voice growing louder and more cruel with every word he spoke. He was leaning towards Krissy as well, who was trying to lean away.  
  
"Dean!" Sam said again. "Stop it! It's not her fault!"  
  
"Then whose fucking fault is it?" Dean asked, rounding on his brother. "You didn't do anything. You just fucking… _stood_  there while that little blonde  _terror_ killed Cas."  
  
"Hey!" Krissy shouted. She sounded much more sober than she was feeling. "She was  _not_  some fucking 'blonde terror.'" She made sloppy air quotes with her fingers. "She was fucking  _ruined_  by what Castiel did to her and her family. She didn't deserve what happened to her. And  _you're_  the person that just _let_  it happen.  _You_  dropped her hand and let her kill Castiel. If she hadn't, she might've lived longer! She might've even stopped wanting to kill Castiel to begin with. If she'd gotten to that point, she would've been okay.  _Everything_  would've been okay, but you-you just let her  _kill_ him and  _die_!"  
  
" _You're_  the one who wanted to use Cas as bait to begin with," Dean sneered, pointing an accusing finger at her. "If we'd done some other fucking idea, then they'd  _both_  still be alive. Have you ever thought about  _that_?"  
  
"Dean stop!" Sam yelled, pulling his brother away from Krissy who had tears streaming down her cheeks, though she looked as defiant as he did. "This isn't anyone's fault. Cas died. That happened. And so did Claire. No one is at fault for it. Not you. Not me. Not Krissy. It just happened. We couldn't have stopped it even if we wanted to because none of us saw it coming. We just have to learn to accept it and live with it and go on from it."  
  
No one said anything after that. Krissy stared at the gravel of the parking lot and dug at the grass under the tree. Dean stared up at the stars, his hands clasped so tightly together that his knuckles were white. Sam's jaw was clenched tightly and he stared at nothing. Jesse, who had been silent through the whole exchange, finished off the alcohol and ended up throwing up near dawn.  
  
No one had wanted to go to sleep and wake up with the same horrific realization they'd lost everything again, so they all stayed up until the sun rose and then they left the motel, getting ready to head from California to Illinois within a day. Claire's and Jimmy's bodies weren't going to stay in the condition they were in forever.  
  
No one was hungry, so they left once they all managed to drag themselves into their cars with the bodies they needed to return home in their backseats. They didn't plan on stopping until they got to Pontiac, Illinois.  
  
Krissy dreaded arriving at their destination the whole way there. The last time she'd seen Amelia Novak, she'd promised she would protect her daughter. She'd promised her that she wouldn't have to worry about her ever again, even if she never saw her again. And she'd managed to break that promise.  
  
As she drove, Dean's words kept reverberating in her head over and over again.  
  
 _"You're the one who wanted to use Cas as bait to begin with. If we'd done some other fucking idea, then they'd both still be alive. Have you ever thought about that?"_  
  
She knew he'd been drunk. She knew he probably hadn't really meant what he said, but she couldn't help thinking that, to some extent at least, he was right. If she'd come up with some idea that didn't involve Castiel, then maybe Claire would still be alive and Castiel would be too. She didn't know what other idea she could've come up with (other than searching California bit by bit and just praying she found her before whatever sickness she'd had killed her), but she knew there had to have been something. She could've saved two lives, but instead she had killed them both and she knew she'd hate herself for that for the rest of her life.  
  
It took them thirty hours to drive from Ahwahnee to Pontiac and by the time they got there, it was evident that the bodies in their backseats had been dead for some time. Krissy hated it. She hated that Claire's death was more real now than it had been only a couple of days ago. She sat in her car in front of Amelia Novak's house and sobbed into her steering wheel, muttering over and over and over again the same words.  
  
"I'm so sorry, Claire. I'm so sorry…I failed you. I should've saved you, but I didn't. I failed you. I'm so sorry."  
  
She didn't leave her car until Amelia Novak knocked on her window thirty minutes later. And then she had to explain to her what had happened and she got to hate herself all over again.  
  
It shocked everyone just how well Amelia Novak took hearing of the death of both her daughter and her husband. Krissy had a feeling that Amelia knew it was coming long before it actually did. She'd already been mourning them as though they were dead. In her mind, they probably were. The bodies just confirmed it.  
  
"Mrs. Novak," Krissy said carefully as they all sat in her living room, holding steaming mugs of coffee that they weren't drinking, "it's…tradition for hunters to be burned to avoid being turned into a vengeful spirit or something after they die. Claire and Ca – Jimmy both would've wanted to be cremated."  
  
Amelia nodded. "I am going to have them cremated. Jimmy always told me he wanted his ashes sprinkled in Yellowstone. I'm not sure about Claire." She smiled sadly at Krissy. "You probably would know where she'd like to have her ashes sprinkled better than I would, so I'll give them to you."  
Krissy wanted to refuse. The last thing she wanted was to be carrying Claire's ashes around in her backpack until she found where she only thought Claire might've wanted to be her final resting place. It was too big of a responsibility, but she only smiled and nodded. Mrs. Novak was trusting her with this and, since she'd failed her before, she might as well try not to do that a second time.  
  
They talked about the funeral then and Mrs. Novak scheduled it for the next day, once the bodies had been cremated. No one had any black clothes, so they left the house and went out to buy the appropriate funeral wear. Mrs. Novak said she would bring the bodies of her daughter and husband to the crematorium while they were gone.  
  
As Krissy got into her car, she felt worse than ever as she imagined Mrs. Novak driving to the crematorium alone with the bodies of her family in the backseat. Out of all of them, Amelia Novak was the most innocent and deserved this the least and yet she was the one person who'd lost everyone and everything.  
  
It took Krissy almost an hour to walk into the JCPenney's she drove to. She had to have another cry in front of her steering wheel.  
  
The next morning, Krissy stood in front of the full length mirror at the motel she was currently staying at, pulling on a black dress that looked like it belonged to Wednesday in the Addams's family more than it did her. There was even a white collar and white sleeve cuffs. She didn't look at her reflection until she'd smoothed out the dress and thought she looked as nice as she was going to get.  
  
Once upon a time, Krissy Chambers had been a small, dark-haired girl that lived with her father while he went on hunts around the country after her mother died. But that had all changed when her father had been murdered by a vampire who only wanted her to be a part of his family because he was lonely. She'd stayed in the house the vampire had left behind with Aiden and Josephine for a few weeks, but eventually had left. She'd come across Ben Braeden and Jesse Turner on some solo hunts and then she'd found Claire Novak in an asylum in Louisiana. Now she was here, standing in a motel room alone, wearing a ridiculous dress for the funeral of Claire, the girl she'd fallen in love with. The thought was enough to bring tears to her eyes.  
  
Amelia Novak didn't deserve anything that had happened to her, but Krissy didn't really think that she personally deserved any of the things that had happened to her either.  
  
The cemetery was a small thing placed on a small plot of land, surrounded by houses on all sides. The sky was overcast and there was a tent over the graves of Jimmy and Claire. The weatherman had said there would be rain today and everyone wanted to be prepared.  
  
Krissy couldn't stop thinking how incredibly cliché that was.  
  
There were two large mahogany coffins resting on stilts under the tents. They were closed and no one except Krissy, Jesse, Dean, Sam, and Amelia knew that was because there weren't any bodies in them.  
  
Instead, three pictures had been set up in front of the coffins.  
  
The first picture was of Jimmy Novak on what Krissy guessed was Amelia and Jimmy's wedding day. He had cake smeared on his face and his eyes were closed when the camera had taken the picture, but he looked happy. The second picture was of Claire and Jimmy. Claire was sitting on Jimmy's laugh and smiling shyly at the camera. She looked much younger than Krissy could ever remember having seen her. Jimmy was smiling just as shyly as his daughter. It was clear where Claire got most of her traits. The last picture was of Claire. Krissy had a feeling it was the last school picture of Claire ever taken, probably shortly before Castiel came into their lives six years ago. She was smiling, her blonde hair framed her face beautifully, and her eyes shone in the picture.  
  
Flowers and candles surrounded the pictures and Krissy half wanted to set the whole set up ablaze. There were only five people at this event that truly knew the torture Jimmy and Claire had suffered. The flowers, the pictures, seemed to dim that or dumb it down and make it seem like it was nothing.  
  
The service itself was much the same. The hired priest told them how wonderfully Claire and Jimmy had lived and died and how tragic it was they had to both die so young. He knew nothing about them or their lives and it angered Krissy that he pretended, but she didn't say anything. She kept her head bowed and her fingers laced together as she listened to him prattle on about nothing. When people were called up to give speeches in the honor of the deceased, Krissy thought about going up and talking about everything that had really happened to the two bodies that weren't in the coffins but in the urns behind them, but in the end she decided against it and not just because everyone would've thought she was crazy if she started talking about angels and demons.  
  
She knew if she told the truth to a bunch of people who didn't understand, Claire and Jimmy Novak wouldn't be remembered as a pair of people who'd been taken too soon. Their morality would always been questioned, what had happened to them would always be questioned. They'd become an urban legend in their own hometown and Krissy felt that both of them deserved more than that. They deserved to die in obscurity, to be forgotten long after the people here had joined them in death. They didn't deserve to become something that they never had been and never would be.  
  
After the priest finished his speech, after the coffins had been lowered into the grave, and after dirt and flowers had been sprinkled on top of them, Krissy looked up at the sky.  
  
One drop of rain fell onto her forehead. And then the skies opened up.  
  
The world mourned with them.  
  
It was after the funeral and even before the reception that Krissy gathered Dean, Sam, and Jesse together and told them what she'd been meaning to ever since Claire had died in her arms in that warehouse in Ahwahnee.  
  
"I'm going to hunt on my own from now on," she said quickly, staring at the ground. She didn't want to see the looks on their faces when she said it. "I need to be alone and I need to find my own way and I can't do that with anyone. Maybe one day I'll come back, but for now I need to be by myself."  
  
"Krissy, take it from someone who's tried," Dean said, surprising her that he was the first one to speak, "working with a group, no matter how sad you are is better."  
  
Krissy looked up for a moment before her eyes darted back to the ground. She shook her head. "I don't think that's how it's going to be with me," she said. "I just – I really need to be alone for a while. Maybe when I need a higher purpose, I'll come find you guys."  
  
"What about Ben and I?" Jesse asked. "What am I going to tell him?"  
  
"That you have a man cave now," she replied, trying to lighten the mood. It seemed to have the opposite effect. She sighed. "I'll come visit you guys. I promise. I'm going to have to come back to get my stuff eventually anyway, right?"  
  
Jesse said nothing. He pressed his lips into a thin line, crossed his arms over his chest, and looked away. He seemed to be watching the people leaving the cemetery.  
  
"Look," Krissy sighed, "this isn't goodbye. For any of us. We'll see each other again. We all have the same haunts and the hunter community relies on each other whether we want to admit to it or not. I'll see you guys again. Maybe not in a week or a year or even three or four years, but I  _will_  see you again. That's just how this world works."  
  
No one said anything else after that. They just stood together.  
  
That was their way of saying goodbye.  
  
Once the cemetery had emptied, Krissy got into her car and drove the way they'd entered Pontiac, Illinois.  
  
She didn't look back once.  
  
She had work to do.


End file.
